Interview With Tim Millar Of Protest The Hero
February 29th, 2008 by Stephanie Stevens
Welcome to the world of PROTEST THE HERO. A band from Whitby, Ontario, Canada who portray a true sense of passion, technical debauchery and who has a singer who can really put his balls to the wall and give you the greatest aggressive screams and a singing voice that will bring you to your knees. The guys raise the standards of what putting your heart and soul into your work and with their second record FORTRESS they have done just that.
I first became familiar with the guys when their debut album KEZIA came out but never saw them live and this evening when I headed up toWorcester to check them out with Silverstein. I began to understand that this band was just not a product of good production they bring to life their songs in a performance setting and really know what it is to have brains behind their instruments.
After a good opening set I had the chance to steal Tim Millar away from the almost sold out crowd of The Palladium and bring him out to the cold weather of Worcester so we could chat about what there albums mean, the trouble there singer gets into with his microphone, there adventures with videos and his beard. Enjoy and take a chance on PROTEST THE HERO….they got something special going on
NOW THIS ISN’T THE FIRST TIME YOU GUYS PLAYED IN MASS.?
We played at this place (Palladium) maybe three or four times. We played once on Warped Tour somewhere like an airport, it wasn’t in this area, it wasn’t in Boston, somewhere weird like The Hangers or some place
TONIGHT, I THOUGHT THE CROWD WAS KIND OF LAME FOR YOU GUYS! DO YOU THINK IT’S JUST BECAUSE OF THE TOUR?
That and because there were like eighteen hundred people tonight, I mean, even if we have a hundred fans or two hundred fans, they are kind of like dispersed throughout the crowd. I guess there were little pockets like you can’t even see up in the balcony so yeah it wasn’t too great for us, a lot of this tour we’re hoping to like bring the band to new ears. So, we didn’t expect like the crowd singing along and shit, but you could find some people spread out rockin out.
OK, THE NEW ALBUM. THE LAST ALBUM WAS A CONCEPT, WERE YOU GUYS TRYING TO GET AWAY FROM THE WHOLE CONCEPT THING. BECAUSE LAST TIME PEOPLE WERE ANALYZING THE ALBUM WAY TO MUCH?
Yeah, well, it gets like when you say the elusive word “concept” everyone wants to know everything about the concept. We didn’t want to call our record a concept album because of the connotation it has and we tried to make up words like to describe it. But it wasn’t concept album and that didn’t work. Yeah, people want to talk too much about it and I gather the story has some stuff going on but we never, well maybe Arif who writes the lyrics, ya know, thought a lot about it and knows all this and that, that was, ya know what I mean, that wasn’t supposed to be the focus. We think the lyrics play out, crucial part or very big part in like what the band is but it’s not supposed to be what everyone analyzes. Take it for what it is, read it and see what you get from it. If we can give you some insight into what we were thinking about, that’s cool, but when people want to know every single little detail and we don’t really have such a in depth story, its more of a situation we described.
NOW HOW WAS IT DOING YOUR SOPHOMORE ALBUM COMPARED TO DOING THE DEBUT ALBUM?
Sophomore being the second album
YES OK (laughing) WELL, YOU HAD AN EP TOO!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sophomore, when we were in high school, we never had that
I’M SORRY (laughing)
No, no we just knew how people responded to it and as musicians and as writers kind of had a better idea of how to accomplish what we wanted to do. We knew what worked right on the debut album, we knew what didn’t work and kind of tried to refine the songs and the musicianship and all that stuff.
DID YOU GUYS HAVE A BAND MEETING BEFOREHAND AND BE LIKE THIS IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO TRY TO GO FOR OR DID YOU JUST START WRITING?
Showed up to practice with our instruments (laughing). I had this idea; and was like ok we have this riff and so forth
OK. NOW, THERE IS SOMETHING QUOTED IN YOUR BIO SAYING YOU GUYS PUSHED THE ARTFORM IN THE NEW ALBUM BECAUSE IT’S CUT UP IN THAT THREE SONG MOVEMENT
Yeah
IS THAT WHAT YOU GUYS CONSIDER PUSHING THE ARTFORM MAKING IT A DIFFERENT WAY TO LAY OUT A ALBUM FORMAT OR IS THE BIO JUST A BUNCH OF BULL SHIT?
Yeah, I don’t even know what bio it was (laughing) There’s some bio’s you read people are trying to define stuff then they explain everything when there is really not much to be explained. What it is ya know, you put a space between two songs on a CD, you group them like that and all of a sudden there’s this meaning (laughing) of what it is. But mainly it is lyrically these songs tie together a little better and like we just figured out a couple of things, I think we kind of do it to throw people off, to kind of look for the higher meaning and try to synch it up with The Wizard Of Oz and all that, just trying to find something, ya know, find something that isn’t even there. A lot of people think we put a whole lot more thought into it than what we do. There’s not an underlying meaning that like connects everything and it all makes sense. It is just these three songs are similar in lyrical context and then the last were good to pair off like that.
SO YOU WROTE IT, IT CAME TOGETHER AND THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENED TO FALL INTO PLACE
Yeah, a lot of stuff at the end like after we wrote all the songs we figured out in what order we should put them, that’s how things go together and stuff like that.
SO, BASICALLY WHAT YOUR SAYING IS NEVER READ A BIO BECAUSE NONE OF IT’S TRUE
Not that it’s not true (laughing) You read the bio; They try to make things sound greater and like ya know, they exaggerate things, that are not really the case.
I THINK EVERY BAND SHOULD WRITE THEIR OWN BIO!
But if we did that it would be like a bunch of dudes that get drunk and watch movies and do stupid shit, so you need someone to come from outside, but you shouldn’t use that as the only source of research.
NOW, THE ALBUM ACTUALLY GOT PUSHED BACK, WAS IT SUPPOSED TO COME OUT IN ‘07?
Yeah
DID YOU HAVE DEADLINE ISSUES, LIKE YOU GUYS COULDN’T MAKE THEM
Yeah, there’s like this window where we’re your not suppose to put out records, it’s a no no, like Christmas time and they say it’s like the beginning of the year is a stupid time to put one out, right at the beginning, those first couple of weeks, there’s like a six week window, by industry standards that your not supposed to release your record. We listened to the label and they said we needed it in by this date in November and it wasn’t going to happen so that’s why they pushed it but that’s why it took that much longer.
SO, YOU GUYS WORKED ON IT IN DECEMBER THEN?
No, it was done by then but we had to have it in for like the beginning of September and we had it in by the beginning of October, the production took a little longer than we thought. The record was recorded because we had to go, we left on tour and we were oh shit, we’re leaving soon, so everything was recorded but then all the other stuff that was put into it, we didn’t want to rush it because we had come this far, we had taken our time, why would we just cram to get it out on time.
IS IT TRUE THAT EVERYONE SAYS “YOU HAVE YOUR WHOLE LIFE TO WRITE YOUR FIRST ALBUM” BECAUSE THE SECOND ALBUM IS KIND OF RUSHED, DO YOU GUYS FEEL YOU HAVE ENOUGH TIME?
Yeah, we won’t ever let anything be compromised
AND VAGRANT HAS BEEN GOOD TO YOU GUYS?
Yeah, they give you a hard time about it because they want it, you like tell them a date and they base all their marketing and they set it up, get it ready and they’ll push you but by the end of the day they’ll get mad and they’ll be angry phone calls, what the fuck, it’s going to be late and they’re never happy. I forgot but the label called yelling about the producers and saying they were going to come kicking there ass cause it wasn’t done and stuff (laughing)Â but it’s because they are so surprised it wasn’t done and they’ll be angry and whatever but by the end of the day they’re all right to wait.
I KNOW WHEN YOU FIRST SIGNED WITH VAGRANT THERE WASN’T MANY BANDS LIKE YOU GUYS ON THE LABEL
Yeah
YOU WERE KIND OF WORRIED BUT STATISTICALLY EVERYTHING WAS GOOD FOR YOU GUYS SO YOU STAYED ON THE LABEL. DO YOU THINK ANYTHING HAS CHANGED, I’M NOT REALLY BIG ON THE WHOLE VAGRANT THING, HAVE THEY GOTTEN MORE BANDS LIKE YOUR STYLE OR ARE YOU STILL OUT THERE?
Yeah, I don’t know how much it matters to sound like your label mate, it is convenient because you can work together but they have bands like The Bled and From Autumn To Ashes, aggressive stuff, so we weren’t like the first, even though we were different from other bands, it’s kind of like they have a good track record with Dashboard and Saves The Day, so if they know how to build a band, it shouldn’t be too hard, and it shouldn’t depend on the genre.
OK. VIDEOS, NOW! I’VE WATCHED ALL YOUR VIDEOS, THEY ARE INTERESTING. ONE VIDEO I SAW YOU GUYS WERE BLINDFOLDED, THE OTHER ONE YOU HAD FURRY MONEKY APES, THE BEST VIDEO, THE NEW ONE, FOR BLOODMEAT JUST HAS YOU GUYS PERFORMING.
Yeah
YOU GUYS GETTING TOO OLD FOR THIS FUN STUFF OR DO YOU THINK THE MUSIC NOW TALKS MORE AND MAKES EVERYBODY LISTEN MORE THAN HAVING THIS ELABORATE VIDEO?
Yeah, there is the time you can do what you want and kind of do something fun, it doesn’t really matter what you do and we’ve had like a bad history with videos. Not having the right say, getting the video idea together and then we don’t like it, it’s like a fight. I don’t know if you saw our Lesbians vampire video?
NO (laughing)
That was like a classic case of just someone had an idea for the video and we were all this is retarded. There’s like all these really young girls in corsets and vampire fangs, it was just like, to have girls in our videos is really like cool but young looking girls with some questionable shit going on, so we had our problems in the past with video play and not to say you should try to cater to the general…it really sucks when your not getting played just because of something in the video, but instead of ever having trouble and doing something that we really like and capturing the band, there’s not going to be any questions like oh it shows this here and that there. It was just easier to do that and we thought it would be nice to capture the band in alive setting and that’s what you see when you see us play live.
I ENJOYED IT. WHAT’S THE BLINDFOLD, I LIKE THAT VIDEO?
Yeah but there was some stuff in that like showing guts and that was a big issue in the States, I think. A little thing like that and it’s like we’d rather do a video that was meant not to be played like gory and pornographic or whatever that shouldn’t be played
WELL, NOW I WOULDN’T THINK, VIDEO STATIONS I KNOW THEY ARE STILL BIG BUT WITH THE WHOLE MYSPACE AND EVERYTHING, A VIDEO’S A VIDEO, YOU CAN PUT IT UP ON MYSPACE AND PEOPLE WILL SEE IT, SO
Yeah
WHAT WAS THE OTHER VIDEO THAT YOU GUYS DID, YOU GUYS WERE ON THE STREET
Yeah, that was really old ‘These Colors Don’t Run”
WAS THIS SOMETHING YOU WANTED TO DO JUST TO GET THE ATTENTION OR WAS IT SOMETHING YOU WERE REALLY PUSHING TO SAY HEY, THIS IS
A little bit of both, we really wanted to have a video and there is something in Canada that gives you Grant money, the video channels give Canadian bands grants to shoot a video and we didn’t get it. We were stoked on having a video and so we had fifty bucks and we made it happen. The song was like political and we thought like giving the lyrics, having people read the lyrics and informing them, it was our right to go to the streets and play our music and not be in a venue with a limited amount of people, it was like going out there and have people see you and having your message be heard, we just scared some people, didn’t get into any trouble
NO OLD LADIES ROCKING OUT?
No (laughing) People didn’t know who we were. It was funny because maybe one person knew the band. The rest of them people were just giving us weird looks.
(laughing) DO YOU FEEL THAT YOUR SUCCESS IN AMERICA IS GROWING NOW?
Yeah, it’s slow. It’s going to be hard to tell like on this tour how it’s going to be but definitely when we were not touring the States cause if writing the new record and we came back in September and you could really see there was some growth there even though we hadn’t had any activity. There’s been enough for us, most of the major magazines are running articles, so there’s some like media presence and some radio stuff going on and so yeah hopefully we are going to find it on this tour.
IT’S GOOD TO GROW SLOWLY AND THEN BLOW UP!
Yeah, take everything in baby steps.
RIGHT. CANADA, ARE YOU ALWAYS GOING TO STAY TRUE TO YOUR CANADIAN ROOTS, ARE YOU BORN IN CANADA?
Yeah. We just feel we should pay our dues and pay our respects to Canada because we play everywhere and there are a lot of bands just play select cities. We’ll try to be as accommodating as possible where it’s reasonable, if at the end of the day you don’t have enough time, to be playing every tiny little market in Canada, but we try at least to do as much as we can without being silly about it. We don’t want to be a Canadian band; we want to be an international band. I think the people in Canada understand that we not only tour in Canada we have to go other places
THEY LET YOU GO! (laughing)
Yeah, they let us go (laughing) and when we come back, like its cool when we did this last run in Canada with Silverstein, these people have been around like four years, they have the oldest t-shirt, the first t-shirt you made
SO I HEARD YOUR SINGER CAN GET INTO TROUBLE TALKING ON STAGE.
He was good tonight
(laughing) DO YOU GUYS NEED TO SLAP HIM AROUND A FEW TIMES AND SETTLE DOWN OR DO YOU JUST LET HIM GO DO HIS THING?
We let him go, we don’t really think it’s fair, ya know, that is part of the show it is his character. The only thing that sucks about it is when the band gets punished for something he said and some of his opinions won’t reflect the entire band, so he’ll talk a lot of shit but if that means bands don’t want to be our friend and things like that, it just kind of sucks and it’s just like burning bridges we never wanted to build. This band hates you or he’s talking shit about this shitty pop band and they don’t like it, but yeah, it does cause some problems but we just hope it’s just being reflected of him. People should dislike him and not dislike the band. So, it’s kind of hard, just like staying on middle ground, it’s mostly funny because it’s people come up to us saying what the fuck are you talking shit or why or you saying this about us. Cause I want too
(laughing)
They try to get us angry at them and start something and we don’t really care. We don’t like you; you don’t have to like us. Don’t be our friend, we don’t want to fight you guys But, for the most part its funny. It’s usually the labels or someone’s manager calling our manager yelling.
Â
OK, THE STRANGEST THING YOU GUYS HAVE ON YOUR RIDER RIGHT NOW?
Red Wine. We never get it though, in Canada some times we get it usually our rider is beer, some water and veggies and we are happy. I want to put socks on there cause that is practical. I heard Busta Rhymes has ribbed condoms. But if we got there, we probably have a big collection of condoms cause no one would use them (laughing)
(laughing) ALL RIGHT, MY LAST QUESTION IS THIS: IF YOU COULD CHANGE LIFE WITH ANY ONE OF YOUR BAND MEMBERS, WHICH PERSON WOULD YOU CHANGE YOUR LIFE WITH AND WHY?
None of them. I have to? Maybe I’d say Arif because his girlfriend is a babe!
ALL RIGHT, NOW, WOULD HE CHANGE LIFE WITH YOU?
Given, like asked the same question?
YES
Probably not (laughing)
YOU GUYS DOING ANYTHING ELSE, ANY NEW VIDEOS, ANYTHING IN THE WORKS?
Yeah, we are shooting a video in the next few weeks.
FOR? SEQUOIA THRONE THAT’S MY FAVORITE SONG
OK I don’t really know what we’re talking about, the treatment, the idea of the video. Our manager was like we have to talk about this immediately. Our first video came out before the album came out so it is been out for 10 weeks but it just got added to the Canadian countdown so we are like number 29 (laughing)
SO, IS CANADA BETTER WITH YOU GUYS NOW?
Yep, our record debuted at number one! But it’s funny because we sold like 6000 and then the next week like the next week Jack Johnson sold like forty thousand and we were lucky that we made it to the ranks (laughing)
(laughing) ARE YOU GOING TO BE SHOOTING THE NEW VID IN CANADA?
Yeah, we have to fly out to Canada in a few days.
ANY OTHER TOURS COMING UP AFTER THIS?
I think The Chiodos tour after this
I LOVE THEM! BUT WHY ARE YOU GUYS TOURING WITH THEM?
A lot of it is just like industry better relations, and its one of the hottest tours right now. For us to be on this it will be more blank stares but its cool its going to be a great tour. But then we go up with them in Canada for a co-headlinging thing so a little give and take, ya know. We’re not at the point where we are calling our own shots.
YOU’RE TAKING WHAT YOU CAN GET.
It’s a good tour
WHAT’S THE BEST PICK-UP LINE YOU HAVE EVER USED?
I’m so awkward with girls, I think pick up lines are lame. I honestly can’t say something fake like that to a girl. I am the biggest loser in the world, so I would stand at the side of the bar looking at a girl and thinking what can I say that is truthful. It would be bad
OKIE SO NO GOOD PICK UP LINES DO YOU HAVE ANY FAMOUS LAST WORDS?
No, but I was writing a blog about my beard and the last line was like this:Â anyone who is thinking about growing a beard, I encourage you, anyone who started, I would continue to grow, and anyone that has one I encourage you not to shave
SO, ARE YOU GROWING IT LONGER, LIKE ZZ TOP?
Yeah. YESSSSSS. Hopefully, the world record for the longest beard is seventeen feet. The guy who had it started growing it when he was thirty-five and lived to like seventy years old, so if I live a long healthy life, I already have a 10 year start
SO, ARE YOU GOING TO BRAID IT AFTERWARDS? NO?
No, let it grow, natural. No restrictions.
IT MIGHT GET TANGLED UP IN YOUR INSTRUMENT?
No, you can tuck it behind it. My goal is to do a windmill with my beard. It’s hard to get the hair to move like that.
WELL THANKS SIR IT’S BEEN FUN
Thank you for taking the time.
