After putting out a couple of
releases I became a little more confident about releasing records, and seeking
out bands that I wanted to work with.
It certainly helped that I had a pretty successful zine going where I
was constantly being exposed to new music, and booking shows, where I made
contacts with numerous bands.
There was a lot out there and pretty quickly I decided that I didn’t
want to exclusively focus on local bands (even though many of them would play a
role in the label’s history as time went on).
The National Acrobat at Hellfest 2000, Syracuse, NY
One such group that really made an
impression upon me was Time In Malta. They were a Bay Area band that combined
the intensity, skill, and cathartic release of groups like Threadbare, but with
a little bit more of a driving groove.
It was pretty certain that they were going to be doing a full length
with Initial Records, at the time a pretty big name around hardcore
circles. I wanted to jump on
something with them before they did that and I talked to my man Ryan Patterson,
who was working there at the time.
I got to know Ryan through press contact stuff with Initial, and he was
helping book some tours for bands and I set up shows for a couple of the tours
he arranged. So we got to talking
about me doing a Time In Malta single prior to whatever they did with Initial
and Ryan suggested maybe doing it as a split with his brother Evan’s band, The National
Acrobat. Ryan had just joined up
with Acrobat on second guitar and were looking to release some new stuff. I thought it was an OK idea and went
along with it.
Well, Time In Malta ended up doing
their record with Equal Vision Records and sort of left Initial out to dry, which sort
of ended my hope of doing something with them. The Patterson brothers still had the Acrobat stuff ready to
go if I just wanted to do a solo 7” for them and I agreed, but I wasn’t all
that excited about it at first honestly.
And then they sent me the masters for the record and I was blown away by
how crazy it was- the wild time changes, the crushing heaviness, and the wacked
out vocals and lyrics of ultra-eccentric frontman Casper Adams. It was so damn good. I kicked myself for not having more
faith in them earlier on. Ryan
sent over a really cool layout that was all silver ink on the cover and we got
to work. “It’s Nothing Personal”
was released in 2000 and went on to be one of my favorite records I ever
did. The four songs on that little
slab of wax define The National Acrobat to a ‘T’ and remain their best stuff
(out of their short but fruitful tenure), in my humble opinion. But most of all, it was the real start
of my friendship with Ryan and Evan Patterson, which continues strong to this
day. I have booked numerous shows
for, and occasionally toured with, all their bands that followed- Coliseum,
Black Cross, Young Widows, and Breather Resist most notably. I think they are continuously creative
and engaging people who constantly challenge themselves as musicians and
consistently come out with excellent material (just check out Evan’s current
project Jaye Jayle and Ryan’s band Fotocrime for proof). And they are genuinely good and caring
people and I love them both to death.
Finally, I’m probably one of an amount of people you could count on one
hand (who were not in the band) who has a National Acrobat tattoo. So to discuss the Acrobat record they
did for me all those years ago I thought it best to speak to both of them.
So Acrobat started out as Evan’s band and went
through quite a few lineup changes before the “It’s Nothing Personal” lineup
was established?
E: Yeah, I was the main song
writer. I was 15 and the drummer
and I were in hardcore and metal bands in Kentucky. I was in E-town and they were in Louisville and they would
come around and pick me up because I couldn’t drive yet and I’d spend almost
every weekend in our drummers basement.
He was an incredible drummer for his age. We would just play music for hours and hours and hours and
try to make these wild, fucked up songs.
The first lineup of the band, before Ryan joined the band- he was
actually going to move to California and he said to me, in a big brother sort
of way, that if I let him play guitar in Acrobat he wouldn’t move to
California. I kept him in
Louisville. I think on our first
tour, the second show we ever played outside of town (Louisville) was in
Syracuse that you booked. I was 17
at the time. That was before Ryan
was in the band, but he booked the tour and came along with us. There were a lot of different people who
came and went and we started to tour more, playing CBGBs when I was 18, playing
lots of shows with Cave-In and Converge.
We were really active for around a year and a half, even before I got
out of high school. I think we
broke up before I finished high school.
R: The National Acrobat was definitely driven by Evan's creative,
abstract guitar playing, Phil Stosberg's inventive and powerful drumming, and
Casper Adams' absurdist, petulant lyrics and vocal delivery. I was mostly just
the guitar player, although I contributed to some of the songwriting. The band
started with Evan, Phil, and Casper, along with Ty Kreft on bass and Robby
Scott on guitar. With that lineup they were my favorite Louisville band. Ty and
Robby were out of the band sometime after recording the second EP, “The
National Acrobat For All Practical Purposes Is Dead”, then I joined just before
nearly moving to California to work at Revelation Records. I remember Evan
calling me and asking me to be in the band and I always kind of wondered if it
was to keep me in town. Stephen George became the permanent and final bass
player after a brief tenure by Tod Depp, the cousin of Johnny Depp who didn't
let you forget it.
Where did you all find Casper Adams and what was
his story?
E: Casper was in a band called The Moths. He was just this guy who was obsessed with all the Gravity
Records releases like Heroin, Clikitat Ikatowi, Universal Order Of
Armageddon. He was obsessed with
all the same music that I was. I
was hanging out at a local record store and the guy working there was like,
‘you should get this maniac to sing in your band’, and he was friends with all
the other guys in that band. Rob
Pennington was actually going to be in the band originally and he actually came
up with the band name.
R: Casper was an invention from deep in the infamous East End of
Louisville. He'd previously (maybe concurrently) been in a band called The Moths.
I think I recorded a demo for them. I think he drove an old Volvo. He was a
brat in the best way, most of the time. Sometimes you wanted someone to be a
normal human being, but the insanity made for better music and a better show.
The kid was a great frontman and when we were great, we were pretty fucking
great.
I have my side of how the 7” came together, but
on your end, how did that come about and what was Acrobat up to during this
time, to the best of your recollection?
E: I think at that point we
had only released the first EP, which was pre-Ryan and we were touring
more. We played several shows with
Isis. We were rehearsing more and
writing more. And I guess before
Hellfest we had the conversation about it. The single was the first release after splitting up with the
other guys who left the band. It
was sort of an immature stab at them because when we kicked them out we said,
‘it’s nothing personal’. That’s
where the title came from.
R: These were the first songs Stephen and I wrote and recorded in the
Acrobat and I think the general consensus among everyone in the band is still
that the “It's Nothing Personal” 7" was our best stuff. We recorded it
with Kevin Ratterman in a brutally hot sweatbox of a "studio" on Clay
Street in Louisville on to a couple of synced up Roland hard disk recorders.
The skipping record at the beginning was from a Victrola 78rpm record that our
parents owned and I still have now. We were young and excited, touring a bit
and playing with tons of great bands of the time, very excited that they all
seemed to like us and help us out.
I know that you booked the first date of the first tour for The National Acrobat, when I was the roadie for the band, and you and I had been friends before that, I think. Maybe through Initial Records? I can't recall but I certainly feel that you've always been a part of my touring life from some of its earliest days. I don't remember if you asked to do a record for us or if I asked you, but it was a very natural and easy thing. Is this the only record we did together? I suppose it is and that's pretty crazy, it seems like we've always been connected and doing things together.
I know that you booked the first date of the first tour for The National Acrobat, when I was the roadie for the band, and you and I had been friends before that, I think. Maybe through Initial Records? I can't recall but I certainly feel that you've always been a part of my touring life from some of its earliest days. I don't remember if you asked to do a record for us or if I asked you, but it was a very natural and easy thing. Is this the only record we did together? I suppose it is and that's pretty crazy, it seems like we've always been connected and doing things together.
Acrobat kind of took an adversarial approach to
the Louisville scene in general, even going so far as to say you were
Louisville’s most hated band. What
was that all about?
E: Casper was a bit of an
antagonistic wild card. He would
start shit up with people, and it was sort of harmless because he’s a harmless
person. But I think a lot of
people in the DIY community kind of looked at a lot of the other guys in the
band as being more fortunate, or having wealthier parents. Maybe they were a little spoiled. And I think there were some more
interpersonal things that didn’t have anything to do with me, or my brother, and
more to do with Casper. That was
kind of weird.
R: Most of that took place before I was in the band. Some of those guys
were still in high school, or just out, and there were little beefs that arose.
It was silly, petty kids' stuff and not something I had any involvement with,
that I recall. After that I think we felt that we were ignored in town, or
under-appreciated, or something along those lines. For me, growing up an
insecure, sensitive punk kid in a small town, even smaller than Louisville, I have
always felt like an underdog. Those feelings were stronger when I was younger
and that somewhat persisted through many of my bands. These days there's a
combination of getting more than enough respect from my town/peers and not
giving a fuck. The National Acrobat was actually pretty well-loved in town, in
hindsight, and we accomplished quite a bit in a short amount of time.
Intro/excerpt from National Acrobat interview in Hanging Like a Hex #14
I think the whole approach of Acrobat was really
unique for the time- there were definitely elements of Hydrahead type bands
like Botch and Drowningman present, but also a really weird sort of inside joke
element going on too, and no one was doing vocals like Casper, who had sort of
a David Yow/Jesus Lizard thing going.
In certain context it wouldn’t be too weird, but you all were primarily
playing for hardcore kids who probably didn’t know what to make of it.
E: It was kind of odd that
the guys in Converge and Isis and that whole Hydrahead scene kind of latched on
to us. Dillinger Escape Plan took
us on tour for like a week. I think
they liked just how obscene the band was.
I think they liked this stylistic clash we had going on, this whole sort
of ‘fuck the world of music’ attitude we had. How many riffs can we squeeze into a three minute song? It was kind of a perfect strange marriage
of all of the late 90’s noise rock and punk. It was like Swing Kids, mixed with Botch, or UOA, or Drive
Like Jehu crunched into a couple of minutes.
R: It's hard to remember exactly what our influences were back then, Evan
might be able to pinpoint it better than me. I would think Deadguy, Ink And
Dagger, Drive Like Jehu, DC stuff in general. I saw Kevin's approach as being
almost Johnny Rotten-esque, with threads of The Nation Of Ulysses and some of
the GSL/Gravity bands that followed in that vibe. Strangely, The Jesus Lizard
was something we were getting into a lot as The National Acrobat was happening,
I was very aware of them but didn't really delve into their records until we
kept getting compared to them. It seems odd in hindsight, but I was such a DC
head that a few of the Touch & Go bands slipped by me as they were active.
Before you all split there was supposed to be a
full length happening with Escape Artist Records. Was there music ever composed for it that never saw the
light of day, or unreleased stuff that ended up being used for other bands?
E: Yeah, I had songs written
that turned into Breather Resist songs that I had sitting around for
years. It was about two years or
so between Acrobat and Breather Resist.
I joined in with Black Cross, playing bass in the mean time. The songwriting for that band was a
little more collaborative and I was just sitting on all these wild parts that I
was waiting to use.
R: A full length on Escape Artist was more of a dream of ours than a
potential reality. It was a great label and we'd become friends with so many of
the bands they released; that really felt like our scene and family. Escape
Artist co-owner Gordon Conrad was a big supporter of the Acrobat and remains a
very good friend to Evan and me, he signed Coliseum to Relapse and has been our
home base in Philly for nearly twenty years now. After The National Acrobat
broke up, the Deathwish guys also expressed that they would've liked to release
an album from us, which led to them working with Evan's next band, Breather
Resist. There were a few instrumental demos that weren't completed, I'm not
sure if they became Breather songs or not.
What led to National Acrobat splitting up?
E: Phil, the drummer, moved
away to go to college. While he
was in college the intensity of the band picked up and we were making all these
future plans and I think it was overwhelming for him to do that and focus on
his college education.
R: Phil quit, I don't recall why or if we knew, and that was that. The
show that ended up being our last was with Cave In and Christiansen in
Louisville in February 2001.
What’s your favorite thing you remember from
being in Acrobat? What’s the least
favorite?
E: The “It’s Nothing
Personal” 7” is my favorite release of ours, without a doubt. There’s something about us working so
hard and touring a lot at the time.
The quality of the recording of that 7” is my favorite as well. There was just a drive on that record
where our connection with Steven, who was playing bass, and Ryan adding his
flavor to the songs, and Kevin (Casper) going full tilt maniac that was a
pinnacle moment of that band. All
the influences and spirits were in the right places. My favorite thing about that band was the absurdity of
throwing together so many ideas into one pot and making songs out of it. Also, the live show was crazy- Kevin
(Casper) would be throwing glitter, using air horns in songs. He was always coming up with wild ideas
on the performance aspect of the band.
There was never a dull moment playing shows with The National
Acrobat. It was always wild. The worst part was also probably also
Kevin (Casper). He would listen to
horrible pop music a lot. At one
point he was obsessed with Brittany Spears. It was funny.
There really weren’t any bad memories with that band.
R:
As with most of my experience with music and touring, it's the long-lasting
friendships I made and the dreamy, hazy memories of the tours and travels. I
remember Phil driving the van down a steep mountain highway in Colorado in the
middle of the night with six foot high snow banks on the side of road and the
smell of our brakes from being strained by the weight of the trailer and Phil
trying to keep us from careening out of control. Of course playing music with
my brother was always special and I'm appreciative of those times as well. I
can't say I have a favorite or least favorite memory, I'm just happy to have
had them and still be on my journey with music.
The National Acrobat set from Hellfest 2000 in Syracuse:
For the next week you can now get The National Acrobat, "It's Nothing Personal" via the bandcamp page for only $2. Do that HERE. One lucky person who purchases the digital record will win a test press of the physical record!
And for those who want an actual physical copy of the 7"... well, there is exactly one left. First come, first serve over HERE.
Enjoy!
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