Toed Interview
We sat down with Toed at their show at the Blind Pig back in December before we went on our unannounced, kind of unplanned hiatus. The footage was shoddy at best, and we were being interrupted so much throughout the interview that we decided to cut our losses and just type this one up. So, without further ado, this is our interview with Toed.
How would you describe your music?
The quickest way that I like to describe it is funk-rock or blues-rock, but it’s definitely eclectic. It's got a bit of jam band in it, it’s got a bit of grunge in it, it’s quite fluid. It’s whatever we’re feeling at the point that the song is written, and it’s always changing, we don’t care what genre it is, if it’s a good song we’ll play it.
How did you guys meet?
Me (Jahan), Micheal, and Simon all went to high school together. The origins of Toed goes back a little bit farther, I (Kaj) actually met four guys at New Way open mic and none of those four guys are in Toed anymore. They had the name originally, but they didn’t have a singer. They were funky, they had a saxophone player, but I connected with them and started playing with them. Through continuing with going to New Way we brought John on, and bit by bit pieces kind of dropped out, and then we brought on Jahan who brought Simon and Micheal. Me (Jahan) and John were in a band previously, that was dissolved, disbanded, melted. But we’d hangout at the bars downtown like Ghostlight and New Way, and that’s where I met Kaj. He told me that he just needed someone to fill in for a rehearsal, that’s all he said, and here we are two years later.
Are you guys very collaborative when you’re writing music?
(Jahan) Hmmmmm, no not really. Actually recently it has been more collaborative. Well it used to be just kind of like, Kaj would write all of the songs and I would play along to that and I was happy with that. When Simon joined, that was the first time that someone else really had a song, there were a couple of songs Brandon, an old member, had written and they’re good songs. Then Simon had his own songs, and he wrote those by himself, and then I would put chords on top of them. But for a while, Kaj would write a song and then Simon would write a song, but recently the setup we got going is that we’ll come in pretty barebones and we’ll all add something and it’s been pretty good.
(Micheal) I’ll speak from personal experience here, my biggest collaborations to this ensemble have been me goofing off and somebody says wait say that again. That’s the jam band aspect of it.
The All The Way Home EP:
(Simon) So like, All The Way Home, those were the first three songs we released when I joined the band. Those were, one song was pretty much written on stage, like freestyled. Jahan just played the blues, it was a blues progression, and very last minute it was kind of made up on the spot.
This new album has been like, Kaj writes a bass line, I’ll write a melody, Jahan will do a guitar part and then, just everyone is now writing their own parts. As opposed to coming in with a whole thing in mind.
Are there any boundaries when writing about people?
No, not really. (Simon) I usually write in code, so i think like if you were a stranger you wouldn’t really know who i’m talking about. So, I think that makes it kind of freeing to just be able to write about anyone.
(Kaj) And I think there’s an aspect of Toed, it may seem obvious, that we’re a little comedic. Some of our earlier songs like Hippity Hoppity are deliberately ridiculous, so when you write with the intention of being comedic it’s hard for people to be offended if our songs are about them.
Who are your biggest song writing influence and how do you differentiate yourself from them?
(Kaj) Red Hot Chili Peppers are a big one, it’s been hard to get away from that just because it’s funky, but you kinda just try to play with melody and vocal delivery in ways that are unique.
(Simon) The doors is a big one for me, especially when I started out, I think I was just doing a Jim Morrison impression. I’m trying to be more original now, i’ve been getting into samba and international music, trying to incorporate all of the different rhythms they have going on.
Is it hard to stay original when writing and not fall into song writing cliches?
(Simon) Lyrically, totally. For me at least, I actually have no fucking idea about what i’m doing ever, like I don’t know the notes I'm playing, I kinda just vibe. That helps me not fall into cliches I guess, because I wouldn’t know how to in the first place.
How do you decide on your album art, is it inspired by the album or just something you think is cool?
(Simon) It depends, for most of the art we commission my sister, she’s a student at CCS and she’s really talented. Usually we’ll just show her the song and let her go off of vibes. With this recent project we have more of a direction we’re going in, so we’ll say use these colors, but generally we like the artist’s interpretations a lot. We give an idea and they kind of come up with the final product.