Interview with Andrew Neufeld

Phone Interview

February 18, 2005

Leah Weinberg: I have to ask...how do you manage to juggle two bands at once?
Andrew Neufeld: Well, the thing is about it, right now, Comeback Kid is kind of going full-time. And Figure Four hasn’t been touring much lately, so it hasn’t been that much of a problem in the last little while. Before, it was pretty hard because I would go on tour with Comeback Kid and then go on tour with Figure Four right away after. It got pretty hard at one point but it’s not that big of a deal right now.

L.W.: Is Figure Four maybe coming to an end?
A.N.: I wouldn’t say that. I think we’re planning on doing a summer thing with Comeback Kid actually in Europe. But we don’t really have anything in the States planned. It’s kind of weird, like we’ve kind of been in limbo for a little while. Not really sure what’s going on exactly.

L.W.: When you first joined Comeback Kid, what made you decide to do that even though you were already in Figure Four?
A.N.: I was singing in Figure Four and I wrote a lot of the songs and stuff. I wanted to play guitar in a band and I also wanted to do something a little different. Figure Four’s pretty straight-up and heavy, and I love that, but I wanted to do something like a fast, melodic band, with singalongs and stuff like that, that’s kind of like how Comeback Kid is. I just wanted to start a new band. I talk to Jeremy, Kyle and Scott and we just started that band. At first it was just kind of like the side project kind of thing and then we got some momentum going. When we started touring, people caught on right away and so it kind of became the priority.

L.W.: Was it difficult for you to go from being a lead singer to a guitar player?
A.N.: I don’t know, I kind of like it better. I’m not in the middle. I’m not the center. I can just kind of be on the side and play my instrument. It was a pretty good transition for me. I hadn’t played guitar in a touring band and trying to be a real band, so for me, the only struggle was making sure I was tight live and not breaking strings during shows, not looking like a shitty guitar player I guess.
L.W.: Do you prefer one or the other now?
A.N.: I would not like to answer that question.

L.W.: When you guys asked Scott to join the band, he had never sung in a band before. How did you know that he was the right person for the job?
A.N.: He was just a good friend of ours. Scott was like one of my best friends before this band started. I knew that we were into a lot of the same music. We have the same passion for hardcore and music in general. We just thought it would be good for him to be in the band and I think it has worked out awesome. At first, it was harder to get him to sound how he wanted to sound, how we wanted it to sound. At first, we weren’t really sure how his vocals were going to sound but it just took time and practice.

L.W.: Are you guys excited about the album coming out on Tuesday?
A.N.: I’m very excited about the album coming out. It’s pretty exciting. I’m kind of anxious for it to happen. We do our CD release show this Sunday and then the record comes out on Tuesday. It’s really exciting. I’m curious to see how the record’s gonna do. But I’m not really that worried about that so much. I’m just hoping people will like it. We’re pretty happy with the record. If some people like it, that’s cool with us. We wrote the record just for ourselves. At first we were kinda worried, like we had this little window of, we didn’t want to write a record that was too different from our last one and we didn’t want to write a record that was too the same. So we had this little window that we wanted to go through of writing within. We just kind of had to get past our fears and just write music for ourselves. That’s what we did. The record that came out, we’re really happy with it. I can’t wait for the record to come out.
L.W.: Was it harder for you guys to write the record with that constraint on it?
A.N.: Well, it’s like you have one record and people expect something from you. But I said it before, if you write music for other people, it’s not gonna be real, you know? You just gotta write music for yourself and do what you want to do.

L.W.: After you finished recording, you toured Europe, Japan and Australia. How did those shows go?
A.N.: Those tours were awesome actually. We wanted to hit up some other places. We’d been touring in the States and Canada so much and we still had the old record out and the new record wasn’t going to come out for a while, so we wanted to hit up Europe again. We went there with Champion and that was just an amazing tour. And we had the opportunity to go to Japan and Australia and we thought it would be perfect timing, like right before the new record comes out. I can’t wait to go back.

L.W.: Was there anything about playing in those countries that surprised you?
A.N.: In Australia and Japan, the kids are really, really passionate about their shows. It’s just really awesome to see. Maybe it wasn’t anything like super out-there different, but I always felt this energy that I think is sometimes lacking in North America. People in North America are really spoiled as far as they have bands coming through all the time. Japan and Australia, you don’t have touring bands coming through all the time. So, they definitely don’t take it for granted and they’re really supportive of it and are really passionate about it.

L.W.: Three words that describe Comeback Kid
A.N.: Hardcore. This is horrible. Let’s erase hardcore. Energy. Honesty. Passion.
L.W.: Those are good.
A.N.: Those are my three cheesy answers.

Related Links:
Official Website