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RYAN JONES HERE TALKING WITH KEVIN SANDERS OF CARTEL, KEVIN WHAT’S THE CURRENT LINEUP OF THE BAND? It’s me, my names Kevin and I play drums. Will sings. Our friend Nick plays guitar. Joseph Pepper plays lead guitar. And then the newest edition is Jeff Lett, and he plays bass. AND WHERE ARE YOU GUYS FROM? We actually all grew up in the same hometown, in Conyers, Georgia, which is about thirty miles east of Atlanta. Then throughout the years we all kind of migrated out to Atlanta to go to college and what not, but then we all became dropouts in Atlanta and started the band. YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN PLAYING IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER FOR AWHILE NOW RIGHT? Correct. Nick and I- he plays rhythm guitar- he and I have been playing together since we were like 13 or 14 years old. We were in our first band together ever. That band kind of spawned other bands. Amongst our group of friends we’ve all been playing together for almost 10 years now. IS IT KINDA WEIRD BEING IN A SUCCESSFUL BAND WITH GUYS YOU BASICALLY GREW UP WITH? Yeah, it’s crazy. Because it’s like- “Oh My God this is what we used to sit around and do, when we couldn’t drive ourselves anywhere.” And then with some of the things we’re going through now, it can turn into a conversation about when we were younger. We all share a lot of the same friends and our parents know one another. It’s kind of a one big family thing and everybody is really excited about it. It’s cool. HOW DID YOU GUYS END UP SIGNING WITH THE MILITIA GROUP? There was an original guitarist for us named Andy Lee, and he was a guy that we had known in Atlanta for awhile. He had been playing in a band that had broken up. We started Cartel, and then since we went to school with him, we said “Dude, lets start a band, lets play together.” And he said “Alright.” Copeland was on Militia Group, and we kind of knew those guys, but Andy knew them really well. The guy who owns Militia group- Rory Felton- he comes into town every year for the Atlanta Music Conference, and one year he stayed with our old guitarist Andy. And even though Andy was in a different band at the time, he liked what Andy did then and he told him to send him any of his stuff if he did anything new. Andy was in Cartel, and we recorded some demos and sent them to him. He told us it was pretty good stuff and told us to record it. We recorded it and pressed it ourselves and sent him one. He said “Okay, we can work with this.” And then he said “Let’s put two more songs on this and we’ll put it out.” So then we did the whole signing thing, and that was cool. HOW DID YOU GUYS END UP TRANSFERRING OVER FROM THE MILITIA GROUP TO EPIC? Red distribution distributes Militia Group and they have kind of like a slight buy in into the company. And Sony owns Red, so Militia group is pretty much under the Sony umbrella. Lava- which was Jason Flom’s label over at Atlantic- came calling and they said they liked our stuff and wanted to get us on a major. We thought that was cool, but it kind of goes if one is looking at you, then they all start looking at you. And I think Sony realized that they already had us by default. Columbia and Epic kind of had the right out for refusal. So we kind of danced with both of those for awhile and Epic seemed like the right place and they loved us. So we were like “Alright, let’s do it up.” IS THERE ANYTHING DIFFERENT WITH CHROMA ON EPIC’S RELEASE? The only thing that’s different is the artwork has changed slightly because we don’t have the cover over the CD anymore, and as far as the actual record itself, we rerecorded “Save Us” and added a full band to it, so there are drums and guitars and some more orchestration on it. WHAT WAS THE WARPED TOUR LIKE FOR YOU GUYS THIS SUMMER? It was a learning experience to say the least. It was cool on all levels because I used to go to warped tour when I was younger- our tour manager’s mom used to drive us. It was always cool to go, but it would be one thing to play. They asked us to do the whole thing this year, so we said Cool. We went and we played and we sweated. I was surprised at how it was run. I didn’t realize there was a lot of hierarchy that exists among Warped Tour. There are people that have done that tour almost every year it’s existed. There are people that have a lot of seniority, so there’s a little bit of drama, but not really. I think the conditions make everybody a little harder to work with, so everybody keeps to themselves. We’re small, so I was hoping a lot of the bigger bands would come and say “What’s Up, Come Hang Out” and it wasn’t really like that. At the same time we had been touring already since February and we were pretty tired. I was pumped just to play the summer and be able to say “Hey, this one time I played Warped Tour.” Because I fell like Warped Tour is going to go down in history as this big huge thing. It’s going to look as cool as Woodstock is to us now. And I think it would be cool to be able to tell my kids that “Hey I played a whole Warped Tour one time.” CURRENTLY YOU’RE ON TOUR WITH NEW FOUND GLORY RIGHT? Correct. THOSE GUYS HAD TO WORK THEIR ASSES OFF TO GET WHERE THEY ARE, ARE THEY GOOD ROLE MODELS FOR YOU? Absolutely. We spent a lot of our high school careers listening to them. They were and still are one of our favorite bands. We used to go to their shows back when they played the smallest places. The band after my first band was a hardcore band and we played a show with New Found Glory in like ’99 I think, maybe 2000, for about twenty people in Atlanta. I still have the flyer from the show. It’s really cool. It was always like, “Man, if we could tour with New Found Glory- that would be such a full circle type thing.” Now that we’re hanging out with them, we can’t really believe it. It’s crazy to see where the industry is now- not just in the mainstream way, but also with the underground thing and how big it’s gotten. I feel that in a sense they are the God Fathers of that. They really had a hand in paving the way for a lot of the bands that are up and coming now. And I think they helped ease that transition from the smaller stage to the bigger stage. HOW DOES CARTEL WRITE SONGS? As of now, Will is the one who’s always in the back making stuff up. Will riffs out ideas and records them. Then we learn the basic idea, we go into a practice and then start crafting a song: Adding on parts, working on structure, and doing arrangement things. We all have our strengths. Joseph is a phenomenal arranger as far as “Where should the pre-chorus go?” “How many times should we play the chorus?” That’s his strong point. We all have a little flair that we add, and that’s how it becomes a Cartel song. But a lot of our riffs- our starting riffs- go through Will. He’s a powerhouse when it comes to that. Then we put a little Cartel mold on it, and it comes out sounding like it does. WHAT’S THE PLAN AFTER THE TOUR? The plan after the tour is to go home and get fat. I’m going to go home and eat as much Thanksgiving and Christmas food as I can. After this we’re pretty much done for the year. There are a couple of shows here and there, but everything pretty much shuts down for December and January. It gets really cold, and students and everyone go home. That’s the way it should be during those months. At least that’s the way I feel. In January we’re going to write the new record. We already have about 15 songs written. They’re not really in a live format yet, they’re really just a bunch of garbage but it’s just to get the ideas out so we can start crafting them another way. January is the new record month. December is go shopping and get presents month and November is get fat with your family month. So until the end of the year, I’m just in a good mood. My birthday is in October, there’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, it’s just a constant party from here on out. |
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