Toetag

Righteous (CherryDisc)
An interview with bassist John Kozik
by Tim Creter

With the arrival of their new CD, Righteous, Toetag has quickly established themselves as one of Boston’s premiere hardcore outfits. Their sound is raw, their lyrics honest and to the point, with music that gets better with every listen. Here’s an interview with bassist John Kozik (formerly of noisecore band A.C.) on a Saturday afternoon.

I’m looking at your CD right now, and I really like the cover.
Yeah, it’s a picture of the Michigan Militia at target practice, and we just thought it was so stupid how these guys are all drinking beer and shooting off guns. It’s just so typical. We actually had a bunch of different covers for the CD, like tentative covers, and the art director who works for Cherrydisc showed us all of them together and that was definitely the best one, with the best title.

Do you guys have a thing for guns?
No, not at all. Except on that CD, we just wanted everything to kind of tie it together. We’re actually pretty anti-gun violence with all of our lyrics. It’s just that we had the front cover, and we wanted to do something different with the CD itself, and have something cool, so we came up with the gun chamber. And the back cover to try to tie it all together.

So it’s more of an anti-gun thing?
Well, not anti-gun, but anti-gun violence.

When did you join the band?
Four years ago, somewhere along there. It was a while ago, right before the first 7″ came out on Nemesis. I joined about a month after I joined A.C.

What prompted you to leave A.C.?
I just left them five months ago because I wanted to spend more time with Toetag. I have more involvement in writing and being part of the band than I did in A.C. I didn’t really like the direction that A.C. were going in, with the short, fast songs and no lyrics. Their direction was changing, so I decided to do as much with Toetag as I could. I liked playing in two bands, but I felt that it was time to leave A.C. I still had a lot of fun while I was in the band, and after I quit, I actually went back in December and helped them finish up their US tour. We all still live together and are friends, but I just don’t want to play in that band anymore.

In Toetag, do you all write the songs together?
Yeah, I’d say it’s pretty well-balanced between me and Jerry. We write a lot of the riffs together and Mike comes up with lyrics. Sometimes I come up with lyrics and Mike plays the guitar a little bit. The writing is well-distributed.

Are you more of a guitarist or a bassist?
I’m really neither (laughs). I taught myself how to play bass ten years ago. I still think I suck. I mean, I never properly taught myself to do anything, and I didn’t really start playing guitar until about a year before I joined A.C. And when I joined them, it wasn’t really playing guitar. It was using a guitar, but not in the traditional sense. I still don’t really know how to play guitar; I don’t know any chords or anything like that. I just know how to fake it, really.

Do you guys see yourselves on a big label eventually, like Sick of it All on EastWest?
We don’t really look that far ahead. Right now, we’re just happy being on a small label. We’d all like it, but I don’t think we really expect it or look for it. We’re just going with the flow, looking two months ahead at most.

What do you think of the Boston Hardcore scene as a whole?
I’m pretty negative on the Boston Hardcore scene. I like the more traditional hardcore stuff, like the early ’80s kind of sound; bands like Hatchet Face and Ulcer. But I don’t really like a lot of the new “crew” kind of bands that are around, the ones that are “moshcore” or whatever you want to call them. They’re just metal bands disguised as hardcore bands. I just don’t like the mentality of a lot of the bands in Boston right now. I’m pretty down on the Boston scene as a whole.

Yeah, it seems right now there’s not a whole lot of togetherness.
Awww, tell me about it! We played Albany last night. Albany has one of the best scenes in America. It’s just 2-300 kids all in a room, all getting along, you know? It’s day and night between Boston and Albany. It made me so jealous being there last night. It was a really friendly atmosphere, and the kids are truly into the music and just go nuts. It’s so supportive up there. And here, I don’t really sense the feeling of bands helping other bands. There are a lot of really good bands here, but I think the good ones don’t play Boston.

Is Boston your least favorite city to play?
To play? Yeah. I’d much rather drive a few hours and play where the kids are dedicated and into the music.

Have you guys done any real tours yet?
No, we just play anywhere in the region. It’s all just weekend stuff, we don’t really tour. We’d like to, but it’d be too hard for us to go out as a headliner. We have zero management right now; it’s just me booking shows.

Is the song “Chinese Mafia” for real?
Yeah. The old guitar player, Bruce, who played on the first CD, used to live near Chinatown, and one day he came out to his car and the door was open. The speaker was ripped out of the car, and there was a bullet hole on the outside of the door. They tried to break in to get the slug out of the door. True story. So Mike wrote the lyrics to it, and it became a song.

So you’re pretty happy where you are right now?
Oh, yeah. For what we’ve worked and played for, all this time. I’m happy.