Scale The Summit
I recently got the chance to sit down with adventure metal newcomers, Scale The Summit. Chris Letchford filled me in on what the band has been up to and how he invented the best way to drink Dr. Pepper.
André Monnéy: For the record introduce yourself, and what do you do in the band?
Chris Letchford: My name is Chris Letchford, and I play the 8-string guitar in Scale The Summit. I also handle most of the song writing.
AM: To start this thing off on a random note, do you wet your tooth brush before putting tooth paste on it or do you put tooth paste on first and then wet it?
CL: Put the tooth paste first and then I wet the tooth brush.
AM: Well, you guys are all obviously exceptional musicians; when did you decide to take playing your respective instruments to the next level?
CL: Well, I was 13 when I started playing guitar. I have been playing music my whole life. My whole family is very music- or art-oriented. My whole immediate family does artwork and printing, and now I play guitar. I started taking it pretty seriously around 15, which was also when I started taking private lessons. After that I took this summer session at Berklee College of Music in Boston, and that got me even more pumped about guitar. I came back, graduated high school, decided I wanted to play guitar for a living, and I started going to Houston Community College, and I definitely wanted more out of my schooling, so Travis [Levrier, guitar] and I went out to the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles and ended up meeting the rest of the band there.
AM: Do you think your musical background has helped you accomplish everything you’ve accomplished?
CL: I’m 50/50 on that. I think schooling and private lessons definitely helps anyone, but I always tell people it’s whatever you put into it. I know plenty of people that went to music college and did the bare minimum to get by which obviously they are not getting that much better. Me and my other guitar player were up at the school all night and practiced for hours and hours. We really took advantage of the facilities we had. Once we got the band together, we had practice at the school every night. I think school definitely helped to inspire me to practice more. When you’re self taught it’s a little hard to get inspired to learn new things and dedicate time to practicing. This is everything because if you don’t find that inspiration you’re never going to get better.
AM: Did you imagine yourself getting into an instrumental project like Scale The Summit when you first decided you wanted to play music for a living?
CL: Not at first. Travis and I use to play in a technical metal band. When we started writing and developing Scale The Summit, we definitely wanted to play something of the same style but we didn’t plan on not having a singer. After we wrote our first song ever, “Rode In On Horseback,” which appears on Monument, we sat back and listened to it and thought it sounded great. We didn’t really find a need to add a singer since it really already felt complete. The music sounded full and it sounded entertaining which was good. The music was good enough that adding a singer wouldn’t have been the right option, so we just decided to ride the instrumental thing out.
AM: Do you guys think you’ll add a vocalist?
CL: No. That will never happen.
AM: Not for this project anyways.
CL: Yeah. It’s something we’d consider on a future band, but not for this project. Plus we’d have to change the way we write to get it to fit.
AM: What has been the easiest thing about being in an instrumental band?
CL: I’d say the easiest thing is fitting in on pretty much any show we play. We play indie shows just because we don’t have a screamer and then we play black metal shows because we don’t have a singer. One of the most fun shows we’ve ever played was an all black metal show in Victoria, Texas. I think that crowd appreciated it because I’m pretty sure 99% of them played instruments so they can grasp what we are doing.
AM: What has been the hardest thing?
CL: I think what used to be the hardest thing was thinking that we could actually accomplish something pretty big with being an instrumental band. A lot of people think that because we don’t have a singer we won’t be able to accomplish as much, but like I say to everyone, if you put the hard work into it anything can happen. We’re still a very new band, but I think with everything we’ve accomplished so far we’re on a very good track. We have a lot more hard work to do, but we’re doing well.
AM: I’ve been listening to Carving Desert Canyons quite a bit since I received the album, and it’s very fitting to whatever mood you are in.
CL: See and that’s kind of cool because people can listen to the record and digest it and call it whatever they want. They can call it progressive metal, metal or indie rock because we have some indie rock parts in our songs. We all listen to metal, but we definitely do get all our influences from metal bands. I think this record is a lot more mature in terms of the song writing. We are definitely a lot more proud of it than we were with the last CD.
AM: See, I’ve only heard a few of the old songs, but from what I have heard the growth on this new record is exponential.
CL: Well, we did have a lot more time and money to work on this record. With the last record, we self-released it so we didn’t have as much money to back it, and we definitely did not have as much time. With this record we had a month in the studio and we had all the songs written, so when we were there it was just about getting the songs perfected. We definitely did a lot better of a job on this record.
AM: Having written the album, what kind of emotions does the album evoke for you guys when you go back and listen to the finished product?
CL: On each day it varies. Some days I’ll like some songs a little more than others, but I’d say I’m just very proud of the work we’ve done. With the last record I can’t say I 100% enjoyed listening to the record, but now I can definitely assure you guys that we absolutely love every second of this record. I’ll sit back and listen to the record on a really nice stereo, and I just feel super accomplished for writing and recording this. Each of the songs has their own mood so the darker songs skew my mood a little bit, while the happy ones make me feel really good.
AM: Well, you did mention that you don’t just listen to metal so what are some influences that you got from bands or artists that most people might not imagine a metal band would draw influences from?
CL: I really like Yes a lot. I know they are more the founders of prog, and you go and listen to us and there aren’t very many similarities because we’re pretty heavy and complex, but they are one of my favorites when I grew up. I listened to them a lot then, and I still listen to them a lot to this day. One of my favorite guitar players, Bireli Lagrene, is this exceptional jazz guitar player. He actually specializes in this style of guitar called gypsy jazz and it includes a fiddle. It’s funny because when I first heard the term gypsy jazz, I assumed that it was definitely not something I’d be into, but I got the chance to see Lagrene perform live and I was blown away. To this day, that was the favorite guitar show ever. He is definitely another influence who sounds nothing like us, but I draw influences from him. Our drummer listens to a lot of electronic music which I think would surprise a lot of people. I mean we don’t only listen to instrumental music, but we definitely like that virtuoso projects. Oh, and I listen to a lot of death metal.
AM: I like how you go from all that virtuoso stuff to death metal.
CL: We all love that stuff. We actually know the guys in The Faceless, and we got to see them grow when we were both local bands. Now they are touring with Meshuggah and Cynic and that is just awesome.
AM: So you don’t have any random influences from bands like Cute Is What We Aim For?
CL: [laughs] No. No. Not that obscure [laughs]. Not that I have anything against those bands, but I just don’t think I’d ever write songs like that. You have to give them props though for writing stuff that is really catchy that can reach out to a broader audience than we ever will. I’ve listened to New Found Glory but that’s about it. I actually have a lot of friends in pop punk bands, and I go and check out theirs shows because they are always entertaining. I mean their music isn’t as complex so they have more time to focus on their stage performance so that always makes the show entertaining.
AM: Yeah, plus they always have those prepubescent girls yelling out to them.
CL: Yeah. I’m 6’4’’ so I tower over 80% of the people in the room so it makes me feel really awkward, but they are friends so I gotta go.
AM: I know you guys plan to tour a majority of 2009, what do you look forward to about getting out on the road?
CL: We have. We have a tour coming up on April 25th through May 22nd, I think, with Intronaut, Tombs, and Bison B.C.. That is pretty much a full U.S. tour. We definitely want more, and we’re getting help to tour as much as we can. That was our last goal after getting hooked up with Prosthetic Records and getting the record out. We just want to play music to people every night.
AM: What do you look forward to about getting out on the road?
CL: I think just playing. We haven’t played a show in almost 8 or 9 months. We definitely miss being on the road. We practice almost 5 days a week, but it’s just not the same because we are playing for walls instead of fans. Plus, playing on the road is the most rewarding thing we could do as a band. We get to play our music, travel the world, and meet new people.
AM: That’s a really long time to be off tour.
CL: Yeah. We had some tours last year, but they didn’t go so well so we had to cancel out. Then we started working on this new record for about 4 months and then went into the studio. Now we are just preparing for the release of the record.
AM: Now you guys have self-described yourselves as “adventure metal.” Why place yourself in a subgenre when you could just simply describe yourselves as a “metal band”?
CL: Well, besides saying metal band, I hate telling people that we’re a prog metal band. You can’t build your own niche when you are placing yourself in an already abundant subgenre like progressive metal. I would definitely never describe us as a metal band because people will automatically assume we are going to have a screamer. I think our music is eclectic enough that we can appeal to people who like any kind of metal or even to a jazz guy who listens to no kind of metal. We started using adventure metal back when we were in MI because people would tell us that they felt like our music was taking them on a journey. The adventure metal genre was really just to develop our own niche. I mean I think of progressive metal, and I think of Opeth and Between the Buried and Me, and those two bands are already different enough to be considered the same genre. It works well to when we are telling people to check out the band. We’ll tell them, check us out we’re an adventure metal band and they’ll say, “Oh, that’s cool. That sounds like…nothing. I better check that out.”
AM: It’s funny because every time I think of adventure metal I just think of Star Wars.
CL: Well, there you go. We do write our music in a very epic fashion so it would make some sense. It’s funny because we have had people tell us they could see us playing a show with a back screen with Star Wars on it. We were actually going to do that a while ago, but it never worked out.
AM: Do you think you’d ever go back to that idea?
CL: Oh definitely. I’m sure one day we’ll go back and do it. Maybe for Halloween or something, and then I can dress up as a Star Wars character. See that’s the other problem. We can’t really afford to have intricate costumes because of the style of music we are playing.
AM: Yeah, I wouldn’t imagine it would be easy to play your instruments dressed as Chewbaca.
CL: Exactly. We were going to have our drummer do that but he’d get ridiculously hot.
AM: See that is why you use a giant Jaba the Hut cardboard cut-out for him. That way you cover the entire drum set and him.
AM: You guys have all been pretty open about your talents (i.e. Chris is the Annoy King, Jordan is the Keeper of the Fro, Pat can talk like Yoda, and Travis is the inventor of the rat face), are there any talents that you think no one else could do besides yourselves?
Last but not least, do you have any final words for our readers before we finish this thing up?
CL: Well, Travis and I use to build custom guitars from scratch. I actually use to do a lot of extreme sports, but as far as talents, I’m not sure. I do design work and I’m talented in that. Oh, I also invented the best way to drink Dr. Pepper.
AM: Yeah, I actually did see that.
CL: That seems to be the one that comes up most often. People are always curious, but I do have instructions that I can share with everyone. That process actually works with any soda, not just Dr. Pepper.
AM: Well another question is, it seems like a lot of bands are working about “making it.” When do you think you’ll have made it as a band?
CL: Well, I don’t think we’d get to being like Britney Spears huge or anything, but I think just being on tour full time and playing music full time would be making it for us. I mean we all did go to music school so this is our destiny. I think I have one last goal and that is to tour South America, Australia, Japan, and Europe. As far as making it though, I already have because I play guitar for a living, I teach when I’m home. I think I’ve made it to where I wanted to be in the music industry, but I definitely want to make it more awesome. I know with this Guitar World thing we’ve gotten a lot of good reception, and we get a lot of kids writing and asking advice for advice. So it’s definitely getting better. Plus I don’t know if you know, but we respond to 99.9% of mail from fans so we really get overwhelmed by all that work but appreciate the fact that they like to talk with us. I’ve really enjoyed talking with kids.
AM: Do you think you would keep writing if you guys got huge?
CL: Yeah. I mean not to rip on other bands, but when you’re on tour you sit in a club for 6 hours doing nothing and you can use that time to write back. This is how we’ve always been, but if we were getting a ton of message I don’t think we’d be able to get to everything. We all split up the jobs, I get a lot of the emails and our drummer gets MySpace comments so we really make it a point to do this. It’s always funny because people never think we are going to write back. We get a ton of messages where kids are like, “Whoa we didn’t think anyone was going to write back.” I mean we are human. It’s not like they are writing to mythological creatures [laughs]. If someone is interested in my work, I am going to give them the time of day they deserve.
AM: Well, just to wrap this thing up, did you want to leave any last words with our readers?
CL: Make sure to check out our new CD and check us out on tour.