Mark: I think it’s hard these days as well, I guess when you’re only touring periodically, and doing only festivals, it’s quite a commitment to actually go out there and go to the expense of recording a new album. Were you always writing in the mean time? Are some of these songs from years ago, or are they new compositions?
Mark S: They are all recent songs. I mean, it’s not stuff that’s been laying around for fifteen years or whatever! These were all written in the last two years, I guess it took maybe three years at the most. We are all good song writers to some extent, so we spend a lot of time writing songs, I write songs on my own, all the time, Steve does, Brian does, he writes songs for his other band Rhino Bucket, we all enjoy writing songs. There were a whole bunch of songs out there that we all had, and when we brought Taylor in to select the songs that most sounded like Kix, that helped us whittle it down quite a bit. We went from thirty songs, down to what you hear on the record, with Taylor’s help, and then there were a couple of songs that were written in the last part of the demo process, so there are some really new songs on there, and that’s good because it feels really fresh to us. We were excited to work on it, it wasn’t just old crap that was lying around!
Mark: You can tell, listening to the album, one of the things we always liked about Kix, here in Australia, was that you sort of reminded us of AC/DC.
Mark S: That’s a very high compliment, coming from Australia! I appreciate that! We are huge AC/DC fans, is there any greater rock band in the world?
Mark: We don’t think so, no!
Mark S: I have to agree with you, I really do, and I think most of the guys in Kix would agree with that as well!
Mark: But, you had something more, I think AC/DC were known for putting out the same album, over and over, and good as it may be, there is more variety in a band like Kix. We loved the video for “Love me with Your Top Down”, to us, that’s just classic Kix, and it had to be the obvious choice for the first single, is that the feeling within the band?
Mark S: It was funny, when we started talking about a single with the record label, I think initially we were all excited about the title track, “Rock Your Face Off”, because it had some major attitude, we all like all the songs, but that one we thought really moves, and has a cool riff and really works, and as the album developed, and in the mixing stages we got more and more done, I think the focus turned to “Top Down” for the first single and you know the record company steers that bicycle a little bit with their radio consultants and all that kind of stuff. We would have been happy with pretty much any of the songs, there’s quite a few strong ones there that could’ve easily done well as a first single, but that one does have a lot of ingredients that are classic Kix, and it’s a fun song, it’s a cool guitar riff, and it sounds like Summer, so we were really happy with the choice, and really had no complaints about that being the first one.
Mark: I think you’re right, and I think the best thing about the album is I can’t pick a favourite! Even the ballad, “Inside Outside, Inn” has been getting great reviews, it’s probably the best ballad Kix have done since, the obvious one, which we all know and love!!
Mark S: Yeah, Steve wrote the lyrics to that, and it’s just kind of a conversation to his wife. When I got that song from Steve, I was just blown away by the sentiment of the lyric, it was a great song and so we worked on the music together, and put it together from there. I love the song, I really don’t like ballads, but I love that one! That song I really have quite a feeling for, and it’s probably because of the lyric message that he came up with, it’s just a really nice thing to say to your significant other, and to have those feelings for someone, and to put it in a song, is really significant.
Mark: The track listing is great as well, because that’s nicely contrasted with the next song, “Mean Miss Adventure”, which has a real sleazy groove to it, and so there’s a lot on there for everyone. Do you have a particular favourite? At the moment I’m listening to “Tail on the Wag”, and that’s the one that’s swaying it for me at the moment.
Mark S: I was there for the whole recording and writing process, and so after the mixing and the mastering it changed for me. But typically for me as a song writer, my favourite songs are the last ones that I wrote, so, “Rollin’ in Honey”, “Top Down” and “Can’t Stop the Show” were the last ones that were put together for the record, so right now, those three are really my favourites. But, in the past it has been almost every song on the record! I hear you on “Tail on the Wag”, that’s Steve’s song, and I really like that one as well, that has something that I probably wouldn’t have written, and has a certain attitude that Steve has when he writes guitar riffs, that I don’t really have. It’s just different from stuff I do and stuff Brian does, and that’s the nice thing about everybody being involved in the writing process, you create that variety that it’s still not outside the Kix theme, but there’s enough variety there so that every song does not sound the same.
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