In March, the Canadian band Good Kid kicked off a United States tour starting with a show in Vancouver B.C., then Seattle for their second stop March 30.
This U.S. tour is the largest Good Kid has conducted, with their last U.S. tour being around a year ago. In the past, they have split it into East Coast and West Coast as opposed to one large tour. This tour also takes place in larger venues, so not only is it longer with more stops, but more people are at each show.
Guitarists Jacob Tsafantinos and David Wood met in high school and performed in other bands together. Then later in university, the two met Michael Kozakov, the bassist, in German class. Tsafantinos had his guitar with him and Kozakov, noticing the guitar, triggered a conversation leading to bringing Nick Frosst in as vocalist and Jon Kereliuk on drums.
Kozakov was unable to make the Seattle show but in his place, the band had a cutout of their mascot Nomu Kid with a name tag reading Michael.
Tsafantinos was nice enough to talk with us about their new EP “Good Kid 4” as well as the tour and the band’s creative process.
SA: You just released your new EP, would you be able to talk about the vision behind it?
JT: “This one worked out in a really nice way where we wrote these songs within a pretty short time range. And so a lot of themes of what Nick was going through just bleed into it. So we have a song “Bubbly.” It’s about dealing with crippling anxiety, and that feeling of not being able to leave your house or room. But then the next song that we put out was called “Break.” “Break” is about not being able to essentially deal with this stuff and getting to the edge of your limits. Then we have a song called “Summer.” “Summer” is about self-acceptance and in a lot of ways it’s about trying to fix and repair things. So there’s definitely this thread of mental health that comes full circle with these songs that I thought was pretty interesting.”
Good Kid’s writing process is a collaborative effort between all five members and can be rather chaotic and has led historically to creative arguments between the members of the band. No one member of the band has more creative control than other members; every song and creative product that comes from the band is that of democratic collaboration. Butting heads does occur but with this latest EP it has lessened, and according to Tsafantinos, has been an evolution for the dynamic of the group. Cohesion on this EP was much smoother than it has been in the past leading to a more cohesive and productive flow.
SA: Why the choice to do this more free-flow, communal style of writing?
JT: “It started from a practical standpoint, to be honest, I think we didn’t have anyone who was turning out so many songs that there was an obvious, primary songwriter. We’ve been a band for a while now, and I think part of what we like about it is the ritual of meeting up regularly. We still have regular band practices two or three times a week and we’ve been doing that for the past eight to 10 years. I think it just evolved that way naturally at the beginning and we just haven’t had a reason to change it.”
SA: With doing this for eight to 10 years, what keeps y’all together making music?
JT: “I think it’s what I kind of alluded to that sense of camaraderie and brother-ship that we get out of it. We have a core group of five guys we get to see multiple times a week, hang out with, have good times, and now those experiences get to be even bigger and better; getting to travel the world together and live out our dreams together. But honestly, I feel that even if a lot of the success wasn’t happening, we would still be happy just meeting up.”
SA: One thing I found really interesting is your artwork and the music videos that you’ve had, they’re very fanciful. I was wondering where the idea for the artwork comes from.
JT: “Early on, we knew we wanted to have an artistic graphic representation of the band The Sound. That’s stemmed for a lot of reasons. We love that kind of style. We love anime. Michael’s a huge fan of the Gorillaz. I have a childhood friend Gabriel Rows who’s an incredible, incredible artist and illustrator. He’s the kind of guy that you tell him “hey, we need something,” and he comes back with the best thing you’ve ever seen. That’s what happened with our first song. We just sent him the song, sent him the lyrics, and we were like, come up with whatever you want. Then he came up with a couple of things and one of ’em was this kid. From there we built on that.”
However, the art stems from the name, not the name seeming from the art. Good Kid’s name is loosely inspired by a quote from Jim Carrey’s “The Mask.” “You were good kid, real good. But as long as I’m around, you’ll always be second best, see?”
The U.S. tour has almost completely sold out, and many of the venues have been upgraded in size multiple times, leading to a great feeling of success for the band and sighted excitement for their European tour later in the year.
