INTERVIEW ~ KEVIN BALDES OF LIT

I'm music magazine, lit, hoobastank, my own worst enemy, tried and true tour, the life that i got, american authors, taste like gold, kevin blades, alien ant farm

Few bands get the privilege to define an era. And in the early 2000s, as grunge from Seattle gave way to the pop-punk wave from Southern California, there was one band that set itself apart from the rest with an iconic, chart-topping hit that quickly became the anthem of a generation. When Lit captured lightning in a bottle with “My Own Worst Enemy,” the band went from playing shows with maybe a hundred in attendance to rocking sold-out venues across America. At the time, it felt like the band had set the world on fire. It was the song I was guaranteed to hear every time I went to the mall. And now that the original fanbase is older, it’s still the song I’m guaranteed to hear at every karaoke bar at least once, if not a few times. Every time I hear it, I’m transported back to a hazy world before smartphones and social media. It harkens back to a simpler time full of clanky CD cases and heavy stereos that, for reasons I cannot understand but also will not argue with, are coming back into vogue. So when I heard that Lit was not only finally co-headlining a tour with Hoobastank, but that they also have an incredible new album out, my inner teenage dirtbag was ecstatic. The Tried & True Tour, beginning in October, will cover much of the Southern United States and will feature familiar songs as well as material from the new album.

Tastes Like Gold, Lit’s seventh studio album, is available everywhere and features hits like Mouth Shut and Yeah Yeah Yeah. It’s full of humor, like the brutal honesty in “Kicked Off The Plane” and emotion, like the surprising amount of heart in “The Life That I Got” featuring American Authors. Ahead of the upcoming tour with Hoobastank, I got the chance to chat with bassist Kevin Baldes about the band’s history, the new album, the creative process, and the band’s favorite food stops while on tour.

How has prep been going for the upcoming tour with Hoobastank?

Kevin Baldes/Lit: Well it’s been great. We’ve been friends with those guys for years and we’ve done a bunch of shows with them, more one-offs than touring, and last year we were in Florida with them doing a one-off and we spent the entire day with them, sound check and hanging out eating and just getting ready for the show. And then we did shows together that night and then, we were just hanging out afterward and were like ‘how come we haven’t toured together? Maybe we should. Do you guys want to?’ And they were like ‘Yeah, we’d love that. That’d be cool.’ So we finally pulled it together this year. We actually have a couple of warm-up shows with them in Idaho in about two weeks. And then the tour starts in Nashville, Tennessee on October 13th. And my gut feeling is the tour will go pretty well and we’ll end up booking maybe more dates in the following year hopefully.

That’s Awesome!

Yeah, I think Hoobastank and Lit is a very good incentive-type thing. Like, if you like Lit you’re probably going to like Hoobastank and if you like Hoobastank, you might like Lit, you know? And then, in addition to that, we throw Alien Ant Farm on there and throw Kris Roe on there from The Ataris. So I think it rounds out really well. I think if you are interested in any of those bands, you might like one of the other bands as well if not all of them. It’s gonna be a great show.

I was binging the podcast over the weekend. There’s like a surface level of research that I have to do for interviews, but I was really drawn into the podcast. I thought it was just so fantastic.

Aw, thanks.

Just hearing you guys talk about your comradery, your friendship, and being friends with The Offspring during the shed tour days, it’s really powerful.

I love podcasting. And I didn’t get to hear it until it was released. So I did the interview and that was all I did. To hear it all mixed up, it was awesome.

So while I was listening to the podcast, the word that just kept coming up over and over again was brotherhood. How crucial were the ten years of gigging around Orange County and Southern California to strengthening that brotherhood?

It was. It was everything. I mean, there were years where it was like ‘dude is this going to get any better?’ And it’s funny because I can remember thinking back in the day, in those ten years, and each year was getting better. Each year was like we’d break new ground and break new ground. And I remember when we did a name change. When we were super young, we started out as a band called Razzle. And once we got a little bit older, we were kinda scratching our heads going ‘dude, maybe this kinda isn’t really working anymore. A name like this and we’re getting older, you know?’ So we kinda scrapped everything. We changed our name to Stain, which was more of a neutral kind of name and we thought that would play well. The name made sense to us and we felt it was a neutral name in the rock and roll world. And we had to give that name up because someone owned it and we went with Lit. But, to answer your question, every year got better and better and better. In ‘95, we signed our first deal, released an EP, started flying out and doing special shows here and there. And then ‘97, we released our first album. It got better and better. And we toured on that album across the US, which was rough. When you’re like that, and you’re playing in front of nobody and people are playing pool and you’re out there giving it your all because you just released an album, it really strengthens the bond, because nothing strengthens the bond more than when you’re with a group of people, guys or girls, and it’s you against the world. And the world is not listening and you’re banging your head against the wall trying to get people to listen to you. So in ‘98, we left our first label and started just working on new music. I remember that being kind of a scary time because now, in a weird way, for the first couple of months, we were going backward. Like dude, ‘we lost our label. What’s going to happen now?’ And we just kept writing and writing and writing. And the music that we were writing ended up being A Place in the Sun. And we were able to get it into the ear of some folks who were over at RCA and we got a deal. And then things really started picking up. We started going to New York for meetings, mastering the album, and all the promo stuff. All kinds of stuff. It was awesome it finally paid off.

We played our first show in ‘88 so in ‘98, we were flying around across the US to take meetings and do all this different stuff, prepping for 1999 which was when A Place in the Sun came out. So yeah, it was literally ten years of hard work and it finally paid off for us. It really does strengthen the bond and it would be all original members in this band except Allen Shellenberger passed away August 13th of ‘09. Now we have Taylor Carroll on drums, but the other three of us are still original members from childhood and we still have a very special bond.

Absolutely. And it was so moving to hear about Allen’s story. I think that’s such a relatable concept.

Yeah.

We’ve all experienced loss in some kind of way. And we haven’t all played sold-out arenas, but loss is this thing that just translates through music and it happens to everybody.

Yeah, it has and it will, ya know? It’s a part of life and we understand that it doesn’t make us more special than anyone else, but when you’re a band and people kind of put their hooks into you, you’re part of their life. Even without knowing us, we become part of the family. We just played a show in Michigan and an entire family showed up and the dad was almost in tears meeting us. We were told that the father/daughter dance was our song, Lullaby. And the entire family, including the new husband of one of the daughters, was wearing Lit shirts. I mean, everything in their world was Lit. They had my ear. They had my undivided attention. And they were telling me, ‘we have a wall in our house that’s dedicated to Lit.’ And just to hear that kind of stuff is likeーI’m family to them and they don’t even know me and I don’t even know them, but because of the music, and it spoke to them in a certain way, you become family to them. And that means a lot to us. It doesn’t go unnoticed. I was able to get the whole band out there to meet these people and they were great. And then there was a bunch of other people, obviously. [Laughs] But it was so neat to see generations into Lit. That’s when it’s really cool. It’s not just ‘mom and dad liked Lit in high school.’ It moved down the rope a little bit.

I mean, I grew up with you guys. Part of the reason why I picked up a bass at thirteen was because of that bass line in My Own Worst Enemy. So now to play that song for my daughter, it’s a really special experience.

That’s awesome. I love hearing that. I love hearing that.

So I want to talk a little bit about the new album, Tastes Like Gold. I’ve had it on repeat. My daughter has thoroughly enjoyed it with me. And I’ve been seeing and hearing the audience’s feedback. How crucial is the audience’s response when you’re premiering a new album?

It’s huge. And I gotta be honest with you. The reception to the new album material, when we play it live, it’s just like it was back in ‘98 – ‘99 when we were playing A Place in the Sun for the first time in front of people. People kinda perk up. There’s something about it that’s grabbing their ear. And we are listening to people and people write us on social media and people tell us at shows the songs that they like best. We are adding songs to the set for this upcoming tour off of the new album and it feels so good when you feel a connection with the audience. Because I’m on stage, the crowd is looking at four individuals on stage and I’m looking at like hundreds, sometimes thousands of people and you can see it’s like a room full of cats and you’re wiggling a piece of fish around. You can see all their heads moving at the same time. [Laughs] You can see the audience reacting the same way across the board. I can’t explain it.

The albumーit makes me feel like I’m fifteen again. And it’s such a comfort to hear Mouth Shut and be reminded that sticking your foot in your mouth or the same concepts that My Own Worst Enemy had, I can still feel these ways as an adult.

Totally, yeah. Nothing has changed, believe me. [Laughs]

If Tripping the Light Fantastic and A Place in the Sun were the pop-punk response to the monetary focus of Orange County and Southern California at the time, what is Tastes Like Gold a response to?

Oh God, I don’t know. [Laughs] The best way for me to answer that is just it’s a snapshot of where we are in life. And like I said, nothing’s changed, ya know? “Kicked Off the Plane” is a true story. Fortunately. Unfortunately. It’s funny, when I sing that song live, I’m like ‘God, this really happened.’ And I remembered it happenedーit wasn’t even a year ago that happened.

Wow!

And then “keep your mouth shut,” obviously, is very relatable because, with this day and age and social media, it’s like, dude there’s times I write things in response to somebody’s post and I delete it. And in truth, that happens at least a couple times a week. I’m old enough and I’m smart enough to know now, question what you’re doing right now because what’s the reaction going to be and do you want that reaction? Oftentimes, I just go ‘Nah, I don’t really want that.’

[Laughs]

I don’t want the feedback. So, I’ll typically just sometimes delete what I’m going to say in response to somebody’s post. And then “Life That I Got” has been a huge one for people. Although, it does have foul language in it. If people are listening to that song with their very young kids—they probably don’t, ya know? We do with our kid, but I’m in the band and he wants to hear it. And we know he knows better, not to use that language. But anyway, that song, across the board, people are gravitating towards that song because it, again, speaks to a large volume of people in America. And you gotta just, first and foremost, enjoy what you have. I always tell my son, ‘take inventory, bud.’ Don’t want what other kids have. Look around at what you have and you have a lot. You have more than these people, but these people over here have more than you and that’s okay. You gotta be okay with that. You gotta learn to be happy with what you’ve got. And that’s kind of what that song is about. “Life That I Got.” And I think once we start pushing that song and start playing it live, I think it’ll hopefully take hold and I think more people will be wanting to hear that song more.

I think definitely, yeah. We’re kind of at a point where we’re craving the physical. I’ve been reading other interviews that you’ve done and you talk a lot about your affinity for physical copies of vinyl and CDs and having physical copies of music around you. So for the song, specifically Mouth Shut, is that song for you saying there’s something to having a physical conversation with people rather than a digital one?

I think so, yeah absolutely. It’s funny because we’re in a band together and we’ve got a lot of years under our belt and sometimes texts, even within the band, come off the wrong way and I think a face-to-face conversation is tough, but sometimes that is worth more than texting. I hate text.

[Laughs]

I think unless it’s somebody saying ‘hey, I’m here,’ meaning ‘I’m outside,’ or ‘hey, what time did you want me there tonight?’ Small talk like that is what texting is for. Texting is not for a long conversation about tough stuff. A phone call or an in-person conversation or a band meeting or something of that nature. FaceTime, I might allow. [Laughs]

How important is it to have physical media around you when you’re creating something?

I mean, I’m a huge fan. I have a huge collection of CDs and Vinyl. And maybe that’s because of my age and maybe that’s because I grew up on 8-tracks, vinyl, cassette. I grew up on all that. It’s interesting to see where I was when I was younger and how much a vinyl record meant to me. I mean, I read who mastered the album, who mixed it. I knew their names. And that’s maybe not necessarily important, but it reallyーI guess for lack of a better term, I got to sink my teeth into an album because you held it and you looked at the picture. I mean, I can’t tell you how many hours I spent looking at KISS albums and imagining what they were like when they moved around in those costumes, but to me, they weren’t costumes. Those were like real characters. Dude, I got my first album when I was six. I got “Destroyer” and I still own it. As far as having that kind of stuff around when we’re writing music, being in a room with your acoustic guitar or your bass or your electric guitar and, whether you’re writing with somebody else or just writing a riff or a melody line to yourself, I don’t necessarily need anything there other than a way to record the idea on, usually my iPhone. I record an idea that way and then you just take it to the next level. You hook up with somebody and you try to jam the idea with them, then ultimately record it and finish writing the words and stuff.

So the band, while you guys are still super close, geographically speaking you’ve moved apart a little bit. You don’t share an apartment anymore like you did in the early days and you’ve picked up other projects like photography or making other music. Has distance helped or hindered the writing process and is it easier to get work done without the distraction of friends or is it harder to record on your own?

Well, we’ve managed because we just throw ideas back and forth and sometimes, I would actually just fly out to Nashville to be with Ajay and Jeremy. So we would meet up and write out there. In a weird way, when you fly out there, you’re there for one reason and that’s to reconnect with your guys and write and so that’s the mission. Whereas, when we write here at home, it’s awesome. We would meet up, usually at our warehouse, with a twelve of beer and maybe some Del Taco burritos and we would sit around and work on a new idea. We literally used to have a hand-held little tape recorder and we would record ideas onto a tape. Now we use our iPhones and digitally record it if you just have an idea. The writing process is definitely different from the Tripping the Light, Place in the Sun, Atomic, even Self-Titled days. It’s way different, but it’s equally as cool, I think. Like I said, I fly out there, I’m on a mission.

Now, we’ve gotten a really good peak behind the curtain with the podcast. Do you feel like there’s any merit to or would you ever release any of those hand-held recordings?

I don’t know that we would. I mean, we’re not Led Zeppelin or KISS. I don’t know that we have the legions of fans that it would be worth fixing those all up and whatever. That being said, we have original demos of “Miserable,” “My Own Worst Enemy,” “Quicksand,” some songs off A Place in the Sun so maybe, on some kind of anniversary, we’ll wrap those up in some kind of little thing and release them that way. There’s been talk of that. And there’s some deeper stuff I would love to release one day just for people to have, for it to be on our Spotify or Apple Music, across all the different platforms that play music. I think it would be neat if it was on there for the people that would want to hear it. There’s some really cool stuff that’s very different from Lit today. There’s some stuff that would spin some heads like, ‘whoa, this is them?’

Even just listening to Razzle, I can hear you guys in it, but it still sounds so different.

Yeah, I mean, dude, we were so young and naive, but so hungry. That’s what’s cool about those recordings. We were so hungry. But we weren’t mature songwriters yet. It was very adolescent. [Laughs]

In the podcast, someone said, “We had to leave the house to realize we wanted to come home.” And while listening to the album, I can’t call it a comeback album because you’ve been working so hard this whole time, but is it appropriate to call the album a coming home?

Yeah, I’m cool with that. I think that sounds logical. It’s funny, I was on a dog walk the other day and I started laughing to myself out loud. I don’t know how I came up with this idea, but I almost called Ajay and Jeremy and I was like, ‘dude, the tour after the Hoobastank tour, we should call it a reunion tour and we should put all our names featuring Ajay Popoff, Jeremy Popoff, Kevin Baldes of the original lineup of Lit,’ because some people would go ‘what are they doing? Reunion tour? They never left.’ But we should just call it the reunion tour [laughs] because I just think it would almost kind of like scratch people on the shoulder a little bit. I don’t know, I just think it might be a funny way to wake people to ‘hey, we’re here. We never left.’ And of course, we have our core fanbase, but I just thought it was funny. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you at all.

No, I love it! [Laughs] That’s great, I love it! When you’re writing new music, do you ever feel a need to appeal to the original fanbase?

Yeah, we try to because the original fanbase is probably our age or just a hair younger. Yeah, a little bit of that is there, but I think that comes easily because we’ve always written about life-type stuff. We’re not like Angels & Airwaves. And nothing against Tom DeLonge, but he writes about aliens and stuff like that and that’s cool. That’s his trip. A lot of bands write about outside experiences and other things whereas Lit has always written about relationships, drinking, family life, friendships, hardships, and real-life stuff that we feel people all go through. I think we gravitate towards that and by default, we just tend to gravitate towards that kind of topic material. So, I think if you’re a fan of Lit, that’s easy for people to listen to.

Everything in the new album is still equally, to me, as relatable as anything in A Place in the Sun or even Atomic. I think that’s the power of the band. You guys speak to the heart of what it is to be human.

Thank you. Yeah, I think so.

I’ve got a question about the tour. You guys are going to be hitting Omaha, Boise, Morrisville, Wilmington, and Cypress: food meccas. Is there a state that you feel has the best road food and is there a type of food that you can always count on when you’re on tour?

Mexican food typically, if you can get that, but we live in Southern California and arguably have some of the best Mexican food. But there’s great tex-mex out there in New Mexico and Texas has great barbeque, obviously. I love ribs and I know my guys love ribs. In Memphis, Tennessee, there’s a place called “Rendezvous.” You have to enter the front door through the alley so, you’re literally walking by trash bins and you walk into this place called “Rendezvous” and, any chance we get when we’re in Memphis, we go there. It’s where Elvis Presley used to go at night. He’d shut the place down and pay them enough money where him and his crew could go in and eat without being bothered. They’ve got incredible food there. I mean, I love Memphis dry rub ribs. To me, that’s the best.

That’s awesome. Alright well, I don’t want to keep you any longer. I’m so stoked to see you guys. It’s so awesome to have grown up with you guys and to get the opportunity to see you.

Well thank you and I’m glad you did. I hope to meet you in person there when you come out to the show.

Thank you so much! And thank you for your time today.

I’m Music Magazine Writer Kayleigh Rongey