+/- "Let's Build a Fire" (Absolutely Kosher)
By Tim Den
Monday. Nov 27, 11:28 AM
An interview with guitarist/vocalist James Baluyut.

(read the review of Let's Build a Fire here)

It has been quite a while since your last album, You Are Here. What has been going on all this time?

Essentially, we toured a few times behind You Are Here and then had to take a break because Patrick (Ramos, guitarist/vocalist) had a baby girl with his wife. So he spent a while focusing on just raising her, since he’s a stay-at-home dad. For a year, we took our time recording, meeting maybe about once a week to work on ideas. We had the album pretty much finished by the time we picked a label to go with, but then we still had to remix, master, and tweak the record a bit more. So it wasn’t like we had a finished album and were just waiting for a label to come along. We had to do what was best for us.

Do you think such a comparatively “leisurely” approach to being in a band hurts your “career” in today’s fast-paced, short-attention-span marketplace?

I don’t know… it’s difficult to say what would be different if the new album came out two years ago. We never want to lose momentum, but we had no choice but to take our time

How do you balance life in NYC with being in the band? How do you survive financially?

It’s not as hard as you’d think. Both myself and Chris (Deaner, drummer) freelance: he does computer programming and I’m in film editing. We get paid pretty well doing what we do, and our jobs allow us to take time off and come and go as we please. Patrick’s wife is a nurse, and they can get by on her salary.

Of course it’s not easy: we have friends around the country who can live for months off of one tour. We definitely can’t do that.

Are there any updates from the Versus camp?

We get together once in a while when my brother (Richard Baluyut) is in town. Sometimes we write something and record it. But other than that, there’s not much to report.

So you guys aren’t broken up? You’re actually working on new material?

We never said we were broken up, but at this rate we are working very slowly on new material. I know that it’s certainly not a priority for me: +/- is my main thing. Maybe Versus will have a new album in 10 years. Our last one came out in… 2000, I think? We’re already halfway there!

How come you guys still haven’t found a bassist?

(Chuckles) We usually just use whoever’s around and can tour. There are a couple candidates who we tap on the shoulder every time we need someone, but for the most part it has made writing probably easier. It’s not that we don’t want a permanent bassist: it’s that we haven’t been able to find someone in NYC who we think is right for the job. In other parts of the country, sure, we’ve got people who we’d love to have. But if they’re not in NYC, they can’t be a part of the band’s working process in every sense of the term.

You’re about to visit my home country Taiwan for the third time. Tell me about the scene there, how you guys started going over, etc.

A couple of ex-pats started a music festival in the south of Taiwan a few years ago, initially just for Taiwanese bands. Eventually they started inviting other Asian bands and, later on, American bands. Chris is also in a bluegrass band, and one of their members was living in Taiwan at the time. The festival organizers asked the bluegrass band to play, so Chris thought it’d be cool to maybe have +/- play as well.

When our back catalog started to be licensed in Japan, Chris got in touch with the Taiwanese parties to see if they’d be interested in having us. One of the festival’s organizers also owns a club in Taipei, just above this record store / label. He said that he’d love to have us, but that the label should probably put out a record first. So… that was it. It was like “why not? Why not have your record available in Taiwan? How can it hurt?”

The first time we played over there, it was a little tough cuz the record hadn’t been out very long and not many people knew us, even though the club promoted the show really well. The second time, however, it was amazing. I felt like we were in some huge band. The people went nuts over every little thing we did: they’d start cheering at the very first note of every song. I’d say it was one of my favorite shows of all time.

Do you think there’s a strong underground scene there now?

I think that it’s growing. The store / label is practically inventing it single-handedly.

I’ll tell my grandma to check you out, even though she’s practically deaf.

Great! Then she’ll really like us.

Has being a mainly Asian band effected your experiences with audiences, press, the world either positively or negatively? Do you find that you guys are sometimes treated differently – good or bad – because of your ethnicity?

It’s hard to tell… we’ve never thought of ourselves as an Asian band: we like to concentrate on just being a good band. We’ve never gone out of our way to play up our ethnicity, even though recently we’ve been a part of a few Asian film festivals… but even then, we’re only there because a White guy (our drummer) made our video! (laughs)

But sure, it has been suggested to me that maybe Versus would’ve been huge if we had been a bunch of White dudes. But what can you do? You are who you are. Have I ever felt like people were treating me differently? Not really. Again, our main concern is being a good band, not just a good Asian band.
www.plusmin.us
www.absolutelykosher.com

Click here to buy Let's Build a Fire on iTunes!

Click here to download the iTunes jukebox application for Macintosh or Windows!

Tim Den

Got something constructive to say? By all means, rant away. Gonna blab about something unrelated and/or talk shit? Don't expect your comment to stick around.