Blue October: 'Go Out And Rock'

Blue October impressed everybody by their amazing records and unique sound in the beginning of the century, created a huge fan base and disappeared. Now, after almost two years since their last album, Blue October are going to break the charts with a new record “Foiled,” which already got very good references from critics. Ultimate Guitar appreciated the opportunity to talk to the band’s guitarist CB Hudson and got some interesting answers about country and classical background of the band, plans for touring and useful tips to those, who want to write music. Make sure not to miss a thing!

UG: You’ve got a new record “Foiled” to be released soon. So what’s special about it? And what is it about?

CB Hudson: “Foiled” will be out March 14th and we’re all really excited about it. “Hate Me” is our single right now that is getting a pretty good reaction in the US. On the album there are some extreme ups and some extreme downs. We’re back to call ourselves bipolar rock because we have really slow pretty songs and then we have really heavy, dirty songs. Justin writes from the heart. All of the music that he writes basically experiences what he’s dealt with in his life – good and bad – girls, problems with a whole bunch of things.

Album’s first single “Hate Me” is about a relationship going in a wrong way. Did you get the inspiration from a real situation?

Well, I won’t give names… But basically “Hate Me” is about someone who is telling the person that he loves “I want you to hate me and I want you to move on.” I believe it happened to all of us. It happened to me too. You know, we’ve been in a relationship and we got to a point, when I was just like “Hate me, just leave me alone, it’s best for you. It’s just not working out and I want you to move on.” You know, the opposite of to Love is to Hate.

Back to the record. What was the hardest song to record?

Honestly I think the hardest thing I had to do – we did a remix on our single “Hate Me” and I went to the studio, which is at my house, at about 8 o’clock p.m. I was supposed to basically make it a little bit heavier in the choruses, add a little guitar in the versus. Just kind of beat the song up a bit. And it turned out to be really hard for me to do, because when you play a song in a certain way for so long, everything that you do, you hear is already there. So basically I had to take my brain and shut it off and approach it as if I have never played that song before. And literally I sat in the studio for nine and a half hours and it was in the last 30 minutes when I was in there, I was like “Oh wow! This works!” And I actually finally got something that worked. That was probably the most difficult thing.

There were a couple of times when we were in Los Angeles recording the album and the producer would just look at me and go “You know what, write a whole new part. I’m gonna grab a cigarette and a cup of coffee. I’ll be back in 15.” That’s pretty difficult, especially whenever you’ve been rehearsing with the band getting ready – we do a lot of preproduction getting ready to go to the studio – to have a producer to tell you to write a whole new part in 15 minutes. That’s a lot of pressure.

As far as I understand, you take part in songwriting process…

I do, I co-write songs with Justin. He does all the lyrics. I wrote the guitar to the song “18th Floor Balcony” on our new record. But mostly Justin writes the songs. To one of the songs on the record, called “You Make Me Smile” our bass player Matt Noveskey wrote music. Most of all Justin comes from writing and he has a picture frame of the song – he has the structure down and the chords down and then he allows each one of us to kind of paint the picture within the frame – add our own colors.

Can you give some tips to those, who want to write songs, but don’t know what to start with?

Yeah, there’s one thing that I learned from playing guitar for 21 years now – when I first started playing I focused so much on technique – I wanted to play like Steve Vai, play really fast. I never really spent much time being creative on the instrument. I spent most of my time being like “How can I learn how to play this leak, like Steve Vai does.” And I’d slow down the music half-speed and I would listen to it note for note and I tried to figure it all out. When you start playing there are three things – there’s your technique, there’s spirit and then you should be creative too. And you need to work on all three of those things together. It took a while for me to actually start writing music because I had molded my brain. I played just like Steve Vai. I had to step back and really find my own style. I wish I would have started that when I first picked up the instrument.

Ok, now a couple questions about your gear. What’s your favorite guitars and why?

I grew up playing Ibanez, of course I had a Steve Vai model. I had three unlucky incidents – my Ibanez, they all died the same way – I was playing with my strap twisted over on the front and when I had to lean forward to do something, the strap came out and the guitar fell on the neck and broke the neck. And then I also got into Paul Reed Smith. I’m really enjoying their guitars. I got into jazz about five years ago – I listen to a lot of Norman Brown, George Benson. PRS Gibson has some really nice fat tones – I’ve got a big Gibson Hollabye and it gives really beautiful tones. So, it’s between Gibson and Paul Reed Smith. Those are my favorite guitars.

You have quite a unique sounding - when I hear a song I know that this is Blue October, how do you do this? I mean this is not about having a violin, but rather sharp guitar sound…

It’s funny because we all come from different backgrounds of music. Our violin player was classically trained, he used to be in the international competition. He plays a lot of country fiddle and growing up, he was strictly classical. Jeremy, our drummer, was into country when he was younger. Justin was into The Cure, Midnight Oil, Morrissey, The Smiths, stuff like that. I was into head-banger stuff – I like Metallica, Poisoned, Deaf Leppard, Steve Vain, a lot of instrumental guitars. And then our bass player came from a funk background. So, we all have these different backgrounds and when we mix them all together, we create music. A lot of time we’re fighting over – I want to put a shredded guitar solo and the other members of the band are like “No! No!” And that’s when we have fun. All of that is contributed to our unique sound ‘because we’re pulling it from all different genres.

You’ve been pretty quiet lately since your last album “History For Sale.” Did you miss it – touring, fans, press?

Yeah, we’re all so ready to get back on the road – we’re a touring band, we love being on the road, we love to hit the pavement, we like to go out and rock. We miss the fans, we miss the interactions between the fans, we love our fans. After every show we hang out, we sign autographs, we meet the fans. The fans are extremely important to us. And being gone for so long has really has depressing in a lot of ways. At first it was really nice to be home and actually plant some roots in one place, but after like 4-5 months we were all missing it. Now we’re so ready to go. We couldn’t wait to start practicing and today was our first practice actually!

When it comes to music, what has changed since then?

I think on every record we’re coming more mature musically - in our writing, in stuff like that. And it shows. If you go back and listen to the first records – there was a little bit more rock, more anger and depression. We recorded “History For Sale” on our own with a company called Brando Records and they let us go to the studio and do what we wanted – we produced our own record. There were more pretty songs, but at the same time we had a song “Razorblade” that was a lot heavier. And then on this record we went with more beats and grooves, more melody lines and big fat beats.

On MySpace you sell “Hate Me” t-shirts to your fans for only $2. Does the price even cover the prime costs?

What we’re doing with those t-shirts – we’re giving our fans a chance to get a t-shirt at a really cheap price and we want all our fans to wear these t-shirt at a music festival South by South West festivals conferences in Austin, TX, which is gonna be in mid March. I know there’re a couple of cities, which are already trying to coordinate certain days, when all of our fans will wear these shirts. It’s kind of cool ‘cause people will look around and be like “Wow, that’s really cool! Who’s Blue October and why are all these fans in front of the stage are wearing the same shirts?”
I think basically $2 is the cost, I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think that is the exact cost for a t-shirt – 2 dollars.

Talking about touring, your official website blueoctoberfan.com gives only one date – the 24th of February in Galveston, TX. Are you gonna play any other shows soon?

We’re think about dealing another show in between South by South West and the Galveston show, but Galveston will be our first gig. We’re kind of shopping around right now. We lost our sound engineer, so we’ll hopefully be booking one or two more shows in between February 24th and mid March to kind of let our new sound engineer get a vibe of having a live band to prepare for South by Southwest ‘cause it’s a very important gig for us.

When our CD drops March 14th, we’ll be going for a big tour. We’ll be touring the United States East cost to West coast; we’ll be all over the place. Our record is being played in Hawaii, so we’re really hoping we can go out there for a weekend and take our wives and girlfriends. When the record drops, we’ll be touring non-stop – we’ll go a month out, come home for a couple of days, do our laundry and then hit the road again.

What were the last couple records you bought?

That’s a really good question. I haven’t really bought records for a while… I think probably the last record I actually bought was a new record by a band Cold. It’s a pretty good record. Also a George Benson CD, a Norman Brown CD. I’m really more into instrumental. Normal Brown to me, the jazz guitarist, he is phenomenal, he’s got two records, called “After the Storm” and “Celebration” and the guitar work on these records is unbelievable, he blows my mind.

Do you see any competitors on music scene today? Any bands of your genre that you think are strong enough?

There’re so many bands out there that are good. Sure, every band is a competition – there are so many acts out there that go out and work as hard as we do and have the same passion for the music. I wouldn’t really say we’re competing with them. There’re a lot of nice bands and we have a lot of friends in bands. We work together, we help each other out. Some people want to step on other people’s toes, but we’re all working hard, we’re not trying to step on anyone’s toes, we’re just trying to have a good time and make music. We work together, we play shows together, we help other bands write music, we jam with them – it’s a lot like a big family. A lot of bands out there are like that – we’re all sharing vibes.

What’s the mission of Blue October? Just play music or…?

When I was a kid, I always had this dream of being on stage and making_people_happy. And it’s kind of what we’re doing – we’re out there, we’re making_people_happy. Justin sings about stuff a lot of people don’t want to talk about, but they can rely to. We have a huge fan base because our music touches them in their hearts or it tells the story of something that happened to them and maybe they’re ashamed to talk about it, or maybe they can’t talk about it. There are so many things – having a drug problem or being depressed. Depression is such a sad thing ‘cause a lot of people don’t really know they’re depressed and need help. And we kind of reach out to people, connect with them. All that’s what I want to do - make people happy.

What was the most wicked thing you’ve done recently?

I think the most stupid wicked thing I did was I got really drunk, fell and got knocked unconscious and I separated my shoulder. I wouldn’t really call that wicked, I think it was more like being really stupid. I was trying to be wicked and I ended up being stupid.

Any more “wicked” things you want to do?

Life’s a big adventure. I like to camp, I like to get out of the country. I wanna tour, play, see the world. Tour the whole world would be wicked for me and see a lot of places I’ve never seen – that would be the ultimate high for me to be able to do that.

So, are there any plans on touring Europe and Asia?

I actually found out today “Hate Me,” our single, is out in Canada. We broke international boarder, which we’ve never done before. I believe in Germany we’re getting some airplay as well.

We really want to go Europe. In the US there’s Universal Europe and hopefully our single is reacting good enough. Last week our single was #1 single in the country and hopefully if we get enough promotion over here, we’ll get invited over there to tour. We would love to do that. I’d love to go to Africa, Australia, Russia… I’d love to go everywhere. I don’t wanna go to Iraq right now – that’s probably the only place where I don’t wanna go to. I wanna see the world! And I actually just got e-mail from our tour manager saying “Hey, get your passports in line, make sure they’re up-to-date, because we need to be ready for the international travel.” So, that’s a good sign that we would be heading to Europe!

Comments

[coquet]

blue october rocks

[Pimpinguitarist]

not really

[Jordy]

Blue October is one of the best and most amazing bands, and I really enjoyed this article. good job, UJ.

Foiled will be awesome!

[Outshined]

They are awful...the lyrics to their new song are just plain stupid....another waste of time article by the wonderboys of UG

[Chestaufissen]

They're alright, it's good to see a band from This hell hole making it big.

[bluefanatic]

Guitar_Poet wrote:

never... EVER.. heard them, let alone heard OF them.

For all of you that have never heard and of Blue Octobers songs or have never heard OF them. Go to www.myspace.com/blueoctober and listen to the tracks form their up and coming CD Foiled They are incredible. I see that Outshined does not agree but there is not much telling what she/he listens to. Just Google them and see all the reviews that are written about them.

[SkinnyWhiteBoy]

isn't Blue October a movie?... o.O

[venomvette12]

CB, come party at Rocky LaRues in Lubbock!!! see ya at the show brother!- Trey