The Charlatan caught up with Mason Krawczyk and Kirk Kitzul, from Carleton’s own Maritime Bleach, to chat about the band, their new album, I Am The Door Through Which The Cold Gets In, and their favourite songs.
The Charlatan (TC): Could you tell me a little about how you came together as a band?
Kirk Kitzul (KK) (drums/vocals): Him and I are from Saskatchewan. We played in a band together there called Strangers. And when we were moving here, that band had broke up. We lived in residence for the first year so we couldn’t really play music together ’cause having drums—you couldn’t have it in residence. But once we moved into a house starting our second year of university, then we started jamming and started writing songs together . . . But then we started to try and find a bass player and that took a while. Fast forward to August this year . . . Mason was still living here in Ottawa and he texted me and was like “Hey I figured out who should play bass finally,” so that’s our buddy Josh. And we started jamming with him once I was back here in September and then played our first show October 9th.
TC: I know you guys put your whole album on YouTube as a visual thing. What made you guys want to do that?
KK: So I think a lot about how to present music and how people consume it too ’cause it changes all the time. So the one thing I was thinking was you know my last band put out a recording that didn’t have physical. It was just on Bandcamp. And people aren’t necessarily going to be that enticed by just a Bandcamp link when it scrolls by on Facebook or Twitter or whatever so I figured, “How do you take the whole experience and put it right on Facebook or whatever where people are sharing in the first place.” So that’s where the YouTube idea was. And I just love live studio videos like that—for me, that’s my favourite way of finding music really. Being a player myself . . . just being able to watch and see the band actually do their thing . . . wanting to do that but also thinking about the presentation and how people will consume it.
Mason Krawczyk (MK) (guitar/vocals): Part of it’s also the idea that our band is in some ways inherently a visceral piece of art that we express it in that way. That it can only be captured in some respects as a visual, like the way we write is we try and be very visual almost you can say, so that just helps translate that better.
TC: What does the album title mean?
MK: A lot of the material covered has to do with taking responsibility for emotions and trying to reason and be rational about emotions which I think is always a tug of war. So I Am The Door Through Which The Cold Gets In is like admitting that sometimes you’re the person that is the gateway to maybe something detrimental to someone else. It’s kind of the acknowledgement that “I’m the reason that this has happened to someone else” or “I’m the reason that this lack or missing piece exists” so it’s kind of that affirmation.
TC: I was listening to the album closer, “Nails,” and it’s very distinct from the rest of the album. It’s very different at different points. What was the process of writing that song like?
KK: [Krawczyk] wrote that song on acoustic the way he normally would. The first time he showed it to me, he played it downstairs in the basement, and I cried ’cause I was so proud of Mason for having wrote that song, as well as being excited to be able to bring that song to life even more, and that was one of the songs that we had in that interim period where we were trying to find bass players and stuff. Mason and I had worked on it a bit and then he went home for a summer, and I stayed in Ottawa and so I kept working on it in my head for a bit just on drums when Mason was gone, and then he came back to school and once we finally met up with Josh, then we went back to that song and put it together with him and that’s where a lot of those different parts came together. Like the second kind of verse, restart of it, with the stick-hits and stuff, that whole part—I was apprehensive of even putting that part in because we had an idea already so it was something where we really practiced that idea of “what’s best for the song” and forgetting maybe the original ideas you had, because when you come together it’ll never look the same as it did in your mind, and that’s one of the best things about music.
MK:I think for me—very much more than any other song—that song was a very conscious project in that like everything has its purpose of place—or at least most things—have been fairly thought through in that song, it’s been through the wringer a few times. The lyrics especially, more than a lot of other things, I had a particular thing or specific things I wanted to say so I worked a really long time on the lyrics and stuff and I’m pretty proud. It was one we sat on for a really long time.
TC: Going off that, what are some other songs you guys are most proud of?
KK: Definitely “Drawer,” the second one. Having written it in a different way, and Mason’s lyrics in that song, I think are really great and touch on something that maybe he’ll want to speak to. I think that song and “Seams” are two songs that for me, I’m proud of. And “Seams,” there’s a brush part at the start, and that’s something that I’ve never done in any band at all so to have incorporated that into this band which I would’ve never expected because it is like a more rock band and that I like to play brushes because I’m interested in country music as opposed to rock and stuff so that’s one that I’m just proud of being able to incorporate that into a song in a tasteful way.
MK: “Nails” is one I’m really proud of but aside from that, “Drawer,” very much so. It’s a song that really means a lot to me because it’s about my brother who passed away. That’s just a very emotional song. Hold is one of the first ones we wrote as well that was really—when we wrote that song we were like “We should be in a band”—basically, if we can make music that we feel is good like this, music that makes us happy that we’re making music that sounds like this then we should definitely keep doing this.
KK: One thing I’ll add to that is on the video version of the album, between Drawer and Hold there’s like a longer section and instrumental part and that whole part is improvised . . . Having things that aren’t necessarily set in stone is sort of freeing as a musician when so much of it can be very strict and rigid, and I think that kind of reflects on looking back at what we did in Strangers and the EP we put out called Holding Water is pretty much a long song it’s all very, very calculated in that each song transitions into the next and we kind of took that idea and instead of having it be so rigid we let it be a transition that we can feel free in and let the performance breath I guess.
TC: If you guys had to describe your band in three words, how would you describe it?
KK: Space to breath. I’ll say that.
MK: Blue. Dark blue. That’s the sound I hear.
TC: How do you feel like your reception’s been so far?
MK: It’s been cool—it’s been pretty good.
KK: I just rode the bus on the way here and a friend was talking to me about it and he had really kind things to say and I think there’s been a lot of positive feedback from like our musician friends and I feel like as much as we play music for ourselves first and foremost and we write music that we think connects with ourselves and will connect with other people—there is things that once you have played music for so long you realize musicians will appreciate in a different sense and so just having friends respond to the YouTube idea has been really cool to hear.
MK: I think it’s interesting to compare it to the last release that we were talking about because the process of tracking and recording that was so exhaustive and long. To hear anything good and kind about it is just fantastic, and because it’s so close to the heart, hear anyone say anything specific like “Oh I like this song” for whatever reason, or “I don’t like your voice but I like your music” or anything like that is kind of overwhelming. It’s kind of awesome.
