Interview: Hot Water Music - Auckland & Wellington Shows + Supports Announced

Florida punk titans Hot Water Music are back in Aotearoa New Zealand next week, playing their first local headline shows in fifteen years! Still sporting the same original lineup of Chuck Ragan, Chris Wollard (currently on break from touring), Jason Black and George Rebelo, plus recent recruit Chris Cresswell (also frontman of The Flatliners), HWM today add fuel to the fire with the announcement of NZ special guests — joined at Tāmaki Makaurau's Double Whammy by Undercard and Buzz, and at their already sold out Pōneke gig by Crying Club. Chris Cudby got on the line with bassist Jason Black for a chinwag about HWM's journey in music spanning more than three decades, keeping creative fires burning while honouring their past, the group's family dynamic and more...

Hot Water Music

Tuesday 11th February - Valhalla, Wellington w/ Crying Club (sold out)
Wednesday 12th February - Double Whammy!, Auckland w/ Undercard, Buzz

Tickets on sale now via HERE via UTR 
(note: Australian supports The Flatliners are not playing Hot Water Music's NZ dates)

Chris Cudby: Hi there Jason, my name is Chris, I'm speaking here from New Zealand. I'm in the UnderTheRadar office. We're a local music website around here. We're based in Auckland... Wellington is already sold out, is that right?

Jason Black: It is. It's not an arena or anything, but I'll take it. It's very far from home, I'm really stoked that's the first show of the tour and it's already sold out.

How long have you had a break between shows?

I see the last show we did was the third week in November. We finished up our European run, and then we've been home since then, just kind of muddling through the holidays and our horrible new reality here. Not sad to be leaving the country for a couple weeks.

I get that from our perspective, it looks pretty tough.

It's very wild. Obviously it's a lot of noise at the moment and we'll see where it all ends up. I know we're not the only country dealing with this kind of shit right now. So onward we go, hopefully to something better sometime soon.

Okay so, fifteen years since Hot Water Music last visited New Zealand. As you might imagine, New Zealand has changed both quite a lot and probably not very much in some other ways (since 2010). You guys have put out four albums during that period of time. How do you reckon Hot Water Music has changed or evolved during the last decade and a half?

Wow, a lot I feel like. That is the last time we were down, which was fifteen years ago. Which is insane, so long. We're now touring with Chris Cresswell instead of Chris Wollard. We've grown to five members but we're still four people touring, which is the big obvious glaring difference. Which has been awesome. We feel really lucky to have been able to pull this off — where we add someone, and it just works out to where we all record together, we all write together, we tour with four-fifths of the band and it seems to have just kind of worked itself out. We're thrilled about that. We're getting along a lot better than we were in 2010 too [laughs]. That'll do it when you get closer to fifty, you tend to relax a little bit I guess.

I'm sure that you guys get asked about this a lot — to be in the same band with the same original (members) for thirty years is quite the achievement. Not everyone is capable of that. What do you feel it is about the personal dynamic between you guys and Hot Water Music that keeps keeps you guys together, and keeps you making top of your game music?

It's hard to answer, because it's different every day. As far as keeping just the four of us, the original lineup together, it's not easy at all. Definitely part of the reason is because we have to. I don't think we could replace anyone, and I don't think anyone else thinks we could replace anyone either. You can do a fill-in show here and there without me or George (Rebelo, drummer), sure. But I think when we've already half-replaced the singer live anyway — I don't think we have replaceable singers — then that just leaves me and George. I guess you could replace one of us if you really wanted to, but I don't think anybody does. It's just A: we love each other and we're like a family, and then B: we're also stuck with each other, also like a family.

As far as like the records go... really trying was one of the things. There are a lot of bands that, from where I'm at, they just spit out records. We've done it, so I don't feel bad saying that. There are definitely some records in our catalogue that we made and put out and we knew we didn't work as hard as we could have on them. So when we restarted everything with this new chapter of the band, it was very much important to us that we try to kill it as much as possible with everything. I don't see that going away. We could go write and make a record in two weeks or something if we wanted to, maybe it would be really good, but we're too conscientious of wanting to raise the bar for ourselves. That's helpful. We all write, so there's a lot of filters to get through to get the song done. Nobody can just show up with a half-baked idea and make it on to the album. There's a lot of accountability. I think all those things help.

As bandmates, do you guys much extra-curricular projects on the go at the same time? Would you think that helps keep things sharp in Hot Water Music?

Yes and yes. I mean, Chuck (Ragan)'s just getting back I think today from a solo tour in Europe, with the guys that go over with him when he does solo stuff. He just put out a new record in December (Love and Lore). George is in the studio with Bouncing Souls right now. Chris is going to the studio with Flatliners in a few months maybe, I know that he's working on new stuff with them. Everyone is always writing, because I think it's like a muscle. It's the same as exercise, if you stop you don't lose your ability, but it takes a little while to get it back up to speed. I don't want to say there's no exception to that rule, there's a lot of things that are writing-adjacent, listening to music and things like that, that can also help get that creative spark going. That's a big grey area there, but I do definitely think that helps keep us sharp.

I'm the guy without any other projects right now. I do all the management and stuff for the band, so that's enough for me. Everyone else's other projects are like fuel for me to try to make our record better than them, in a brother competition way or whatever. It's like, "Oh, you guys did that, I guess we should try to do better than that this time around". It helps keep everybody moving along for sure.

Hot Water Music had a rock radio chart hit in Germany, with 'After The Impossible' (featuring City and Colour) from the new album. Now that the album's been out for almost a year, how do you look at VOWS in relation to your three decade back catalogue.

Very favourably. This is definitely the best record we could have made when we made it. I know it's kind of changed from "this the best record we've done". Everyone has their favourite record and I don't want to disagree with people about their taste, that's crazy. But very confident that this is the best record that we could have made when we made this record. With this and Feel the Void, our goal was to do the best version that we could of everything we've always done, on one record with some new stuff. Maybe more with Feel the Void than VOWS and it just carried over, because that's the trajectory we were on.

For me there was a lot of looking back in a good way. Where it was like, what did we do that was awesome that we don't do anymore? For us anyway, we leave things behind when we discover new stuff, sometimes fall into a new different rut or whatever. With us, we can't say we're gonna write a record like "this" and it actually happen. It just turns out whatever it is, it's pretty organic as far as the process goes. Letting our history inform our present would maybe a good way to put it. As far as how we're how we were looking at these last two records, a little bit of "return to form" and then another "return to form part two," kind of record. I'm hoping that the next one we do is just really crazy and freaks everyone out, because those are always my favourite records. I might regret saying that, if we actually make that record and everyone hates it [laughs].

Is there anything that you're listening to at the moment that you're particularly enjoying?

Yes definitely. My favourite record for the last little minute, has been that new Doechii record (Alligator Bites Never Heal). That thing's crazy good. The new Kendrick's (GNX) awesome. Those have been the two records that have been really killing it for me lately. This sounds like such a dumb thing to say — I don't really listen to a tonne of punk anymore. I don't know why. I will say I'm really pumped to hear the new Quicksand record. Because if it's anything like 'Supercollider', which I'm pretty sure it's going to be, the song from the split (EP) we did, that thing's gonna smoke. Tyler The Creator is awesome too. I'm pretty stuck in hip-hop and jazz for most of my listening time these days.

For me I grew up, I started playing jazz. That's kind of how I started playing music, so it's ingrained in me that way. I always want to try to have a pretty diverse palette of styles and whatnot floating around in my brain when we start writing. My intention is, outside of just enjoying what I'm listening to, is to have an unconscious Rolodex of outside-ish influences, that hopefully helps keep our stuff fresh when we're making music.

That fully makes sense. Last one — since it's been a while, what can New Zealand fans look forward to from your shows down under next month?

The sets will be long-ish. We're doing like twenty songs, give or take. We do the best we can at playing something for everyone, which is going to be interesting because we haven't been there in so long. We lean pretty heavy on the new stuff, because it has been well received. It's absolutely more fun for us to play newer stuff because we haven't played it as much, but we're not leaving anybody out in the cold with the set list. Hopefully everyone's super pumped. We're really excited to get back and wish that you guys would let us just stay there, it would be nice.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.