Before their show at Soundlab on Friday night, I got a chance to chat with the Brooklyn hip hop/punk act People With Teeth. It was hard to find a quiet spot in the building and it was very cold outside, so we settled for a damp back hallway to conduct the interview.
buffaBLOG: We are here in this backroom of Soundlab, with
these weird cheetah print chairs that are kind of creepy.
A.K Williams: But… also a lil bit sexy.
Sue-Elise Peebles- And a puddle of what, god only knows.
A.K: Rust and asbestos.
Mike Gerbino: That was going to be our band name originally. Puddle of What God Only Knows.
bB: But now you are People With Teeth. You guys are from Buffalo and Rochester and now you’re based out of the NYC area.
SEP: Yep. Out of Brooklyn.
bB: How’s the scene there?
SEP: The scene in Brooklyn… it’s alright. It’s interesting. It’s one way or the other, good or bad. It’s full of a lot of material and influence and inspiration. It’s definitely bustling down there. Everyone’s doing something so it’s kind of hard to feel cool about yourself cause everybody’s awesome. It’s nice to come back home and be refreshed by playing with artists who don’t think they’re the next Michael Jackson and its nice being around audiences that give a shit.
MG: Yeah, I gotta say, I haven’t met anyone, any artist in Brooklyn, nothing against them, that I enjoyed as friends as I have in Rochester and in Buffalo. Tonight is a perfect example of a show that comes purely out of being really good friends and fans of everyone else. So that doesn’t happen so much in Brooklyn. It’s kind of like, you do your shit and everyone’s doing something so you show up and do it and maybe people show up.
SEP: It’s not that bad though. It is fun.
bB: How did you guys meet and form this group?
AK: Well, Mark and I met in high school and in slam poetry.
MG: Yeah, we met through the slam poetry scene in Rochester. So we got together and started working on stuff. We were in a live band together and in all that stuff and then Elise and I…
SEP: We met in a conference, a New York theater conference thing, stayed in touch, became friends and then we all coincidentally ended up going to college together in the New York tri-state area. So we tried to take what we did up here and mold it to fit down there. We didn’t really have a whole lot together as a group by the first show. We all had shit from our individual things.
AK: So we just jumped around a lot.
MG: Yeah. AK took his shirt off. I think we had no songs that were People With Teeth songs. It was just like, let’s get together and play and ‘oh we don’t have anything’ so we pieced together a half hour set.
AK: Also, probably, I don’t remember it that way, but it also may have been another reason for me to take my shirt off in front of people.
MG: I think it was Halloween and you were trying to be Iggy Pop.
bB: Is your shirt coming off tonight?
AK: We’ll see.
bB: How does the writing process work for you guys?
SEP: We all write. I’d say 98 percent of the time we write are own verses. There might be a couple instances when one person just wrote a piece and we jumped in on it. We all write our own stuff basically but it varies. Sometimes we’re each listening to a beat or each have an idea and we individually write something and present it to the others to see what they can come up with. Or sometimes two of us will be together and do that, and send it to the third person to see what he thinks so it’s rare that we are unified sitting down together but I think that’s most groups. I think it’s rare for that to happen.
MG: That’d be wonderful. Ideally that’d be the way to do it. Sitting down together, but we are all doing things and it’s hard for us to get together that much to create. So usually an idea will pass around and two of us will commit to it and usually the third person is in or vice a versa. Someone always decides like ‘How about we go in this direction’ and we all sort of go with it. Or we say fuck that, it’s stupid and throw it out.
AK: Sometimes, there are conversations were that are a big part of the writing process. A couple of us will get together and shoot the shit about an idea for a song.
MG: Or about something that’s pissing us off.
AK: Yeah or anything that ridiculous enough to make one of us, or all of us, laugh is just what goes in the verses.
bB: What projects do you got coming up?
SEP: We got a new album coming up that we have been working on. Ideally it will be coming out late to mid-summer. That’s what we’re most excited about right now. Hopefully we can shoot a video for a couple of the singles that come off of it. It would be our sophomore EP and its gonna be a little more refined in terms of what we’re trying to achieve sonically.
MG: It’s super refined. Cannot stress how refined its gonna be.
bB: Where did the name People With Teeth come from? I mean, it’s a fact yes.
SEP: It is a fact.
MG: As of now. Inevitably, one of us is going to lose their teeth.
AK: Name it Some People With Teeth.
bB: When you’re 80, it’ll be Nobody With Teeth.
MG: Right. Longevity is what we’re striving for so we hope to be together for the next 60 years.
SEP: The goal is to always be People With Teeth.
AK: I floss twice a day.
MG: I think we answered that question sufficiently.
bB: I think so too. Thanks for the interview.
People With Teeth then went on to give an energetic and interactive
performance, evening playing on the floor with the crowd. One microphone was
cutting in and so it looked like a relay race as they passed the broken
microphone back and forth, but they overcame it for a great show.
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