{"id":23883,"date":"2020-07-27T15:00:38","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T19:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=23883"},"modified":"2020-07-27T15:11:05","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T19:11:05","slug":"interview-catbite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2020\/07\/27\/interview-catbite\/","title":{"rendered":"INTERVIEW: Catbite"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reed Romanko<\/em><\/p>\n

On his show ska is dead and we killed it that aired on July 13, WTBU\u2019s Reed Romanko chatted with Catbite’s Tim Hildebrand<\/span> and Brit Luna<\/span>. Check out the transcript below.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reed Romanko: I\u2019ve looked around online, and maybe I\u2019m bad at looking, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve seen where the name Catbite comes from. In a previous interview, you said you \u201calways wanted to start a band called Catbite,\u201d but why?<\/b><\/p>\n

Tim Hildebrand:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know\u2026 When I first started writing music for my own, without a specific project\u2013 I used to be in a band called the snails, and we\u2019d write music for that band, but then I just started writing music for some imaginary band that would start down the line. Whenever I would save the demos, I would just put in the artist, \u201cCatbite.\u201d I don\u2019t really know where it came from, it started five or six years ago. I wanted to start a hardcore band, and I had hardcore songs and called \u2018em Catbite.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Brit Luna:<\/strong> I just remember you drawing a poster and it was Catbite with a cat on it.<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Yeah, I even made logos and stuff. I don\u2019t know why, it just sounded like a cool name\u2026 I don\u2019t know, I like cats. That\u2019s pretty much the origin. When we started this band\u2013 cause I started another band a couple years ago, just a punk band \u2013 the name floated around, but everyone was like \u201cEh\u2026\u201d and then this one everyone agreed to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: I\u2019m glad to see there\u2019s a consensus this time around. A few months ago, y\u2019all worked with another Bad Time Records band, Omnigone, on a split, and recently the vinyl shipped out\u2013 I think there\u2019s still a few copies left on the Bad Time Records store<\/a>. Looking back, how was that? How was the split-working experience?<\/b><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> It was cool! The way it all came up is Mike, from Bad Time, messaged me once and somehow told me \u201cBy the way, Adam from Omnigone actually covered one of your songs.\u201d And I was like \u201cWhaaaat?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> But he wouldn\u2019t let us hear it.<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> He wouldn\u2019t let us hear it, and he wouldn\u2019t even let us know what song it was for a while.<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> We were just like, \u201cWhat the heck is happening?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Yeah, and then I guess as a band we had the idea to\u2026 Our friend made a dub version of one of our songs. We were like, \u201cHey Mike, would you be interested in maybe doing a seven inch where we release this dub version of this song and also we\u2019ll do a cover?\u201d And he\u2019s like, \u201cWell actually, now that you\u2019re mentioning that\u2013\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> \u201cWe\u2019ve had it in the works already\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Yeah, he\u2019s like, \u201cWhat if you covered an Omnigone song, and they put out your Catbite song, and then you also do another cover.\u201d That\u2019s how that all came to be. We had recently done a London Calling forty-year anniversary show. For the encore, we played \u201cWhite Riot\u201d and a couple other songs. Pretty much, we had this crazy deadline of a month to record these two songs, so we\u2019re like \u201cAlright, let\u2019s pick this gnarly Omnigone song and the heaviest song we know really well that we can record in two hours, which was \u201cWhite Riot\u201d\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: Classic!<\/b><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> We never actually as a band had played the Omnigone song as a band. I made a demo of it on the computer, just guitar, vocals, and fake drums, and sent it out to everyone what we were thinking for how we play it. We went in the study like a week later and just recorded it and \u201cWhite Riot\u201d in like nine hours so\u2026 pretty cool!<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: Nice! And, I\u2019m sure you\u2019d be happy to work with any of the bands on Bad Time Records for another split, but what about off the label? If you could choose any band rocking right now, who would you want to work with on another split?<\/b><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> I\u2019d like to do something with The Interrupters, probably. I think that would be cool, because we both have a similar kind of style, and they\u2019re huge right now, so that\u2019d be sick.<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> I\u2019m trying to think, what\u2019s a band I listen to right now\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: Doesn\u2019t have to be ska, it can be anything.<\/b><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Yeah, I\u2019m trying to think outside of ska right now. Who do I listen to right now?<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> You\u2019ve been listening to\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Oh, Jeff Rosenstock, that\u2019d be the sickest!<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: You can\u2019t go wrong with Rosenstock!<\/b><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> Jeff Rosenstock would be frickin\u2019 awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Yeah, even if it\u2019s any of his projects, like Bomb the Music Industry!, Arrogant Sons of B*tches, or the solo project. Just to collab with him and do some sort of split would be the coolest thing ever.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: From my understanding, Philly is one of the best cities in the country for DIY. How, if at all, has that shaped the dynamics and sound of Catbite?<\/b><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> How has the DIY scene\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know\u2026 The music scene in general, the DIY scene definitely built me as a musician. I moved into Philly about ten years ago to go to college, I went to Temple University. There\u2019s a huge, huge, huge DIY\u2013 pretty much all of the colleges have the DIY house shows and stuff like that. At first, it was so hard to play shows at legitimate venues and stuff, especially being new to the areas, and we would just play at all these cool house shows and DIY venues popping up. That\u2019s where I made the majority of my friends right off that bat moving to Philadelphia, very likeminded people. It was all across the board musically. I would go to hardcore shows, I\u2019d go to folk-punk shows\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> That\u2019s something that I think Philly does very well, there\u2019s a huge variety of different styles, and especially for DIY, there\u2019s all different types of genres, not one specific thing that started with DIY scene.<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> It\u2019s kind of always been when we\u2019re playing shows in Philly, we don\u2019t want to just\u2013 there really aren\u2019t other ska bands anyways, but even if there were, it\u2019s\u2013 the most interesting shows I go to are the very mixed bill. I want there to be a heavy band, a hip hop band, a soul band, that\u2019s the most interesting stuff. You kind of bring your fans that have a similar open-mindedness to all these different genres, and then each band leaves with a whole bunch of new fans that they wouldn\u2019t have gotten otherwise if it was exclusively a ska show. And that\u2019s always kind of been\u2013 there\u2019s a lot of shows where I\u2019ve been to where a lot of the bands sound the same, but the best ones that I\u2019ve noticed, that I remember, are kind of all over the place.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: I\u2019m totally with you on that. So, in terms of like Philly DIY Right now, who are you listening to, who are you really vibing with?<\/b><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> We were supposed to have, right before COVID hit, we were supposed to have our first headlining Philly show. It was at this cool bar called The Tusk. It\u2019s above a sports bar, but upstairs it\u2019s a super DIY style thing. It\u2019s just like a\u00a0 cool, small little bar. The owner, he books all the shows and is super cool in the punk scene and stuff like that, lets you have full control over the shows. We picked our friends, Queen Vice, which is this really cool\u2013\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> They\u2019re so good! They\u2019re probably one of my favorites in Philly right now.<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> They\u2019re like grungy, garage-y, just rock and roll.<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> They\u2019re so good! They put on such a good show.<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> And then we were also going to have our friends Teenage Bigfoot, which is like this really tight, I don\u2019t want to say pop-punk, but kinda pop-punk. The good kind of pop-punk I guess. I know there\u2019s so many types of pop-punk. I feel weird just calling them a pop-punk band, but they\u2019re like three-piece, really heavy, and they\u2019ve been playing all the time for the past three years. Every time I see them they\u2019re so tight.<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> They\u2019re also all really nice people.<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Who else\u2026 there\u2019s also Soul Glo. They mix hip-hop and very heavy hardcore. Who else\u2026 there\u2019s just so many! It\u2019s been so long since I\u2019ve been to a show.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: Haven\u2019t we all! Speaking of shows, last week y\u2019all announced that you\u2019d be playing with The Slackers, The Pietasters, The Bar Stool Preachers, and DJ Boss Harmony on August 1<\/a><\/b>st<\/b> at 3:45pm Eastern Standard Time in a fun, fully virtual concert. Could you talk about that a bit?<\/b><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Yeah, so Dave Hillyard from the slackers, he reached out to me a couple weeks ago, and he was like \u201cHey, we\u2019re going to be having this virtual concert. Would you like to open the show?\u201d and we were like \u201cYeah, we can do that.\u201d And then he was kinda like \u201cthat\u2019d be awesome!\u201d And then we were trying to figure out how to really make this one stand out. Cause we\u2019ve been doing a lot of livestreams\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> Yeah, Tim and I will do these duo things, but we really wanted to have a whole band kind of e-gig.<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Yeah, and we\u2019d already done a lot of stuff with quarantine videos where we would basically have our drummer, in his home, record the drums on video to a click track, and then he\u2019d send it to us. Then we\u2019d all, piece by piece, put our parts on top of it and then put a video out, and then be like a cool, you know, we\u2019d basically just release videos and songs that way. Then, I reached out to this guy Robert who owns this venue in Delco, which is just outside of Philly, and it\u2019s this really, really cool venue, it\u2019s like a\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> An antique shop!<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Antique store, record store, and venue.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: Holy trinity!<\/b><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> And it\u2019s just been sitting there empty, and I was like \u201cHey!\u201d\u2013 and he\u2019s also a big fan of ska and we\u2019re good friends with him and we reached out\u2013 \u201cHey, is there any chance we could just play a show in there to no one but cameras?\u201d and he\u2019s like \u201cAbsolutely!\u201d Didn\u2019t charge us at all, he\u2019s like \u201cYes, tell me when.\u201d So what we did is, the four of us we played a show on a stage. We had a friend, Dorrigan, who runs sound at a couple venues around the city, mostly World Caf\u00e9 Live, he\u2019s a great friend of ours, he did all the sound for it, so it\u2019s professional sound. Then we had our two friends do video. Just a nice, socially distant concert to no one. [laughs] It\u2019s so weird, but it was really cool because we haven\u2019t really played together much as a band this whole time. We just recently in the past month, the four of us have been getting together to practice and write because we\u2019re actually going to be recording soon, but more of that later. But yeah! We\u2019re currently just editing the video, and it\u2019s the closet you can get to seeing us live for a while.<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> It felt really good to just be on stage and perform, even if it was for no one. It was just really nice.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: I\u2019m sure, and given COVID of course, I imagine it\u2019s been very hard to continue progressing and being active as a band. You can\u2019t practice together, but on the other hand I\u2019m sure just the experiences of being in quarantine have done a lot in terms of lyrical and perhaps musical composition. Have y\u2019all been working on anything since quarantine began?<\/strong><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Yeah, so right off the bat, the two of us are married and live together, which is really convenient. So we just, right off the bat, we started just doing acoustic covers of all of our friends\u2019 music, and releasing a song every single day, and video. That was just kinda keeping us going, otherwise we probably would have put our instruments down, just have no motivation. Seeing all of your shows being cancelled and cancelled and cancelled, it\u2019s pretty depressing. We actually had to, we had a really big tour which got cancelled which included us flying out to LA, and we had already bought the tickets, so we made the decision as a band that we\u2019re going to keep the tickets and record our next record. We didn\u2019t really have any new songs, so that was kind of our motivation to write a whole brand new record.<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> We were like \u201cWell, we got our tickets, we\u2019re going to LA.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> So this September, we\u2019re going to be going out to LA to work with this super awesome producer that we\u2019ve been wanting to work with for a while, and we spend two weeks out there recording, so the past couple of weeks we\u2019ve just been making as many demos as possible and getting together once a week to try and run those, so yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> Yeah, we\u2019ve got a handful right now, and they\u2019re sounding pretty cool, I\u2019m excited.<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> We\u2019re up to eight new songs at this point.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: That\u2019s absolutely insane considering the time crunch! Again, in terms of I guess the feeling of the songs and what they\u2019re about, has quarantine played any role in what\u2019s going on in them?<\/b><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> I think this album, to me, I think I said it to you, but it feels more aggressive.<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> At least lyrically it\u2019s a lot more aggressive. I definitely think, not only quarantine, but just everything that\u2019s going on in the world, especially with Black Lives Matter movement and the protests. That really affects us, we\u2019re very moved by the movement and stuff. We\u2019ve been out protesting and stuff. All these feelings are making our songwriting a lot more aggressive. We\u2019re not like a political band, but all four of us are political people and have a lot of feelings about all this. It\u2019s just, you know, a lot more aggressive, but the song writing is pretty consistent with the first record. I don\u2019t know.<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know, I think our song writing has gotten better [laughs].<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Oh yeah, the songwriting has definitely gotten better, but the style\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> A kind of more similar style:<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> It\u2019s hard to describe. We\u2019re really excited about this new record, I think<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> It sounds cool.<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Yeah, these new songs are really\u2026 I feel like we\u2019ve found our sound with everything that\u2019s going on.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: You love to hear it! Backing up a bit, over a year ago, y\u2019all released a music video for \u201cCan\u2019t Give You Love\u201d<\/a> off your self-titled album, where Brit, it was you, right, who wore the bizarre, mesmerizing cat mask while you sing along to the song. <\/b>TH points camera at the cat mask. <\/i><\/b>Oh, there\u2019s the cat mask! [all laugh]\u00a0 So, how did that come to be?<\/b><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> The music video?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: Yeah.<\/b><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> All of our weird videos, that\u2019s my weird mind doing that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> Tim\u2019s got weird ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve seen any of our music videos, you should check out the one for \u201cScratch Me Up,\u201d<\/a> it\u2019s even weirder and way better made. We had our friend Al who does video for a living, he directed and shot and edited the whole thing, super cool. A lot of green screen, cat mask makes an appearance.<\/span><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> At one point, Tim was like \u201cWe should have the Cat Mask in every video that we make.\u201d And I was like \u201cOh my god, we need to retire the cat mask\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

TH:<\/strong> Yeah, now it just chills over there.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RR: Alright, any parting words for fans?<\/b><\/p>\n

BL:<\/strong> Thanks for supporting us during this weird time where it\u2019s been really hard to stay relevant, but we\u2019re trying to thank people for continuing to support us and listen to us and want to hear more.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reed Romanko On his show ska is dead and we killed it that aired on July 13, WTBU\u2019s Reed Romanko chatted with Catbite’s Tim Hildebrand and Brit Luna. Check out the transcript below. \u00a0 Reed Romanko: I\u2019ve looked around online, and maybe I\u2019m bad at looking, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve seen where the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17168,"featured_media":23884,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[1612,29,783],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23883"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23883"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23887,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23883\/revisions\/23887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}