When Gab and I arrived at the apartment of Thick as Thieves members Kellen and Tyler, we didn’t even have to ring the doorbell: The boys of the band were upstairs on the balcony of the apartment just outside Central Square catching some mid-afternoon rays, so we just shouted “HEY!” and wound up surrounded by the members of one of Boston’s most exciting local acts in the comfort of their own living room.  Tyler, Aaron, Kellen and Mike took time out of that gorgeous summer Saturday afternoon to discuss any and all things Thick as Thieves. Whether giggling about the pre-show ritual of smooching guitarist Aaron Benson’s neck (the term “neckhoney” may or may not have been invented expressly for this conversation) or putting the collaborative nature of their creative process into words, Tyler, Aaron, Kellen and Mike all drive one point home: This band is about the music before anything else, and they’d rather play happily in obscurity than sell out to fill seats.

-Hilary Hughes

So, guys.  Where are you from and what brought you to Boston?

Kellen: I came from Maple City, Michigan, and then I went to Berklee.  That’s me.  I studied professional music, which means I’m a professional musician. (Laughs) It means I have a day job.

Mike: I too went to Berklee, though I did not graduate; I intend to.  I play drums, and I’m from a suburb outside Chicago.

Aaron: I’m from the same area as Kellen in rural Michigan.  I came out here the same time as Kellen to go to Berklee.  He actually used to play in a band with my sister, so it’s funny how that all worked out.  I’m from Travers City, the “Cherry Capital of the World.”

Do you get “pop your cherry” jokes constantly?

A: Um, yeah.  Definitely.

T: Well it’s also awkward because Aaron’s still a virgin.  You just made this interview really awkward.  He’s saving himself.  (Laughs)  Oh, yeah.  And I’m actually from Massachusetts, from Deerfield.  I did not go to Berklee.

Seeing as ¾ of you attended Berklee for music, did you meet while playing at Berklee or through other Berklee students?

A: Not actually through being at Berklee; I mean, outside of Kellen, I met Mike through friends, and I ended up playing in a band with a singer who was from his hometown.  It’s kind of a random story.  How the band is today is nothing like how it started.  We’ve all known each other so long that it’s just kind of like friends playing together in a band, but it started through randomly meeting random people through friends.

K: I followed Thick as Thieves before I joined them because I’ve known these guys forever.  I mean, Tyler helped me run out on a slumlord at midnight on New Year’s Eve.  Obviously, I’ve known Aaron and Mike for a long time.  My old iTunes library has un-mastered stuff from the first album unmixed, because I was always so into this band and the music, but I was always playing in different groups and I decided over a year ago to narrow it down.

Sorry.  You ran from a SLUMLORD on New Year’s Eve?

K: It was Allston.

(Everyone laughs.)

Let’s talk about your creative process.  Does one person write the lyrics or the compositional content, or is it more of a collaborative effort for Thick as Thieves in the writing stages and in the studio?

A: Very collaborative.  A lot of times it’s just someone [writing] more than others, but other times it’ll be like, Kellen will come up and say, “Here’s this chord progression, I think it sounds cool like this” and we’ll play with it.  By the end of practice we’ll have a pretty clear idea of the song, but a month later it’ll be a completely different thing. We just mess around with random ideas until it forms a song.  I feel like that’s what’s really worked in making the sound that we have, but it’s not the one way that we write everything.

T: For this next album, which is going to be full length, we’re trying to have 20 or so songs to pick from instead of 10 or 12 that we really want to focus on which is what we’ve done in the past.  Our writing process has really clicked especially in the past couple of weeks.  Ideas have been moving a lot faster and the last song we’ve been working on is one of my favorites we’ve written, ever.  Bands say it all the time that their process is a collaborative one, but with us it really is a collaborative process.  I think that we’re all pretty good about complimenting each others styles.

And you just recently released an EP, right?

T: Yeah, in February.  It was just to get new music out there, to share what we had been working on.

A: I think in contrast to the stuff we had released before, the EP is definitely a snapshot of the current lineup and at the same time it’s also recorded in a way that’s much more a basic arrangement of a four piece rock group without the crazy atmospheric stuff you heard on True Believers… It’s so much more in a raw state.

Tell us about how your sound has evolved over the years that you’ve played together.  What are your influences?

T: I think that there are some bands that we all kind of like.  There’s an overlap in taste, but for the most part what we all grew up listening to is pretty diverse.

M: We started playing around with a lot of electronic stuff, like drum loops and keyboards and stuff like that. Most of that stuff has always been in the recordings, but I think we’re playing around now with trying to incorporate that stuff live.  Our sound kind of evolved that way and I think the writing has started to evolve that way too, and now we’re not afraid to try that stuff live.

Is it because you want to translate what’s on the album to the stage?

M: Most of the time when you do that, keyboards and stuff like that, most of it is written in the studio.  It’s like, you get the core of the song and then you’ll add in a keyboard or add a loop.  Now, I think in the writing, Tyler has started on keyboards and the song evolves with that electronic element.  Not to say that we’re becoming an electronic band; Our music is still very much so guitar-driven rock.

K: Look out, MGMT!  Here we come! (Laughs)

T: I think that no matter how we expand in other ways, the core of the band is going to go back to bands that make guitar-driven music like Sonic Youth.  The new songs we’ve been working on have all the hallmarks of what I think our songs should sound like but I couldn’t tell you why it’s that way.

A: The thing I’ve always liked is that it could be an acoustic and piano song, or it could be crazy loud madness, or it could be very electronic, but it all still sounds like us in some sort of way.  I think that’s how we’ve evolved as a band as we’ve become diverse in being able to play different styles.  I still think we maintain this originality with each song that’s like, “This is still Thick as Thieves.”

Do you have any particular songs that stand out that describe what you were just talking about?  “Weak End with No End” seems like one for me that pertains to this conversation about fusing electronic music with your guitar-driven roots.  Are there any songs in the Thick as Thieves catalogue that you feel particularly connected to?

A: I like that “Chemical Division”, an acoustic song with pretty piano in the background, and “Victims”, which is the last song on our first album, are complete polar opposites and yet they still fit on the same record.

T:  It blows my mind how even bands that I like don’t throw out that range of songs anymore.  Nine tens out of ten you get an album and it functions on a narrow band and songs aren’t that different.  To me it’s markedly boring.  Whether you’re seeing the loudest metal band or you’re seeing a singer/songwriter thing, it’s boring as hell to hear eight songs of the exact same thing within the same parameters.  You can do much more and still be a cohesive band and not have to stick to this very limited range.  I think that’s why on True Believers… there’s a lot from the first to the last song.

I think that the music industry is kind of scared of bands like that.

T: It’s hard to market.  If you’re a synth dance band, there you go! People get it.  People are sucking off the worst of the eighties and dancing.  Well done, you’re playing the same style for twelve songs and that’s great. But it’s boring in a musical sense and it’s also boring in the philosophical sense of art being a reflection of life and stuff. You’re never going to be just angry all the time; You’re not going to be like James Hetfield all the time.  I think we have that spectrum where you can find a song for whatever situation you’re in.  You can’t create totally original material and you’re always going to draw on your influences, but for some reason the bands that seem to be doing really well from Boston are the bands that are like, “Here’s the sound that we’re starting with! Here’s our band!”

I guess that kind of segues into how Boston has influenced you guys in terms of how you write and play and function.  You’ve mentioned how Boston bands have become big… Who are you listening to, and which bands do you like that are local?

A: A lot of people left or broken up recently or have moved.

M: It’s weird: I’ve been so inundated with trying to write recently that I’ve been going back to old stuff we used to listen to. I started to get into  All These Kings a while ago.  They’re hard to describe in that it’s rock but it kind of has that electronic element but they marry it really, really well.  I’ve been listening to them a lot lately.

A: The last band that really started to grow on me just broke up!  Harris!  Yeah, we played with them a long time ago and ended up playing some more shows as they were nearing breaking up, and I remember the second time I’d seen them I was like, “Damn! They’re a really fucking awesome band!”  I just really started liking their music, and they just broke up.  We’re good friends with The Shills, and they’re getting a bit more jammy these days I guess, but I’ve always liked Bryan’s voice and they’re really good guys.

T: The Shills are a really awesome, amazing band.

A: I like the guys in the Everyday Visuals.  They’re doing the alt-country thing these days.

T: Yeah, they’re a band that I’m glad to see doing well. When a band like the Visuals chart with CMJ or they open for Fountains of Wayne I get it, they’re a great band and they’re doing well, but there are a lot of bands that I’m not sure what’s propelled them to where they are.  The mechanics of who gets what shows and who gets what write ups are totally a mystery.

K: I think a lot of those bands spent a lot of time promoting themselves, and I’m not saying that in a negative way.  I think that we’re more introverted personality types that are going to spend more time in a rehearsal space writing music as opposed to catering to self-promotion, and I like that better because I feel that we’re setting ourselves up for a longer run.

A music industry executive once said that if you keep doing what you’re doing instead of trying to move with the trends that success will catch up with you at some point and I think that’s the best way to go about it.

T: You can only truly do what you’re doing if it means something to you.  I think it’s very easy to be like, “What’s charting? What’s popular?  Let’s play a shit ton of synthesizers and draw on that eighties sound!” That’s not who we are.  I’d rather tour with obscurity for the next fifteen years and put out good stuff than have a brief flash of “YAY” and then have people be like “Well, we’re done with that.  That’s enough.”

That’s refreshing, because I feel like a lot of big acts that are out today are like that.  A couple of the bands that we’ve spoken with have touched on this “Boston Band Identity” idea.  It’s not so much a stigma, but the expectations that go along with being from here and playing music.  How did you deal with that as a band and what does being a “Boston band” mean to you?

A: I always thought that, in the past, there was this “in” group of bands you were supposed to be friends with in order to start playing these shows that were packed and sold out and things like that.  I feel like there’s definitely that element of groups of bands that stick together, but I feel like it’s very much that everyone’s doing their own thing.  Especially with how many bands have broken up recently and how many bands have moved off, I don’t know what the scene is anymore.  I thought I knew what the scene was; I don’t know who likes coming out to shows and who likes what venues, but I know what we like doing and we keep doing that. So, I’m a little lost as to what exactly the Boston scene is.  I think there’s a very good scene and there’s a lot of bands, maybe too many bands to differentiate, but yeah.

T: In terms of the Boston scene, I think it’s hard to define.  You look at the bands that are doing well out of Boston, Passion Pit and Bang! Camaro, and Wild Light, none of those bands have any common ground except for the fact that they’re from here, you know?  I just don’t hear any definite regional sound between these bands.

Yeah, everyone says their “ahhhrs” [Editor’s note: I have no idea how to write the literal regional pronunciation for the plural sum of the letter R.  This is the best I could do, Boston.]

(Laughs)

K: Well, those are the people that control the clubs.  They’re the people that run the radio stations and everything like that.  I was kind of shocked and I had never been to a “city” city besides going to Chicago, and Chicago’s radio is really cool, and I came out here and I might as well not have moved.  There’s a few more classic rock stations, but so many stations here are like “Here’s the new one from Nirvana/Godsmack/Alice in Chains!”

T: It’s like construction worker rock.

K: It’s so weird.  I don’t get it!  You have all these students and young people, and the radio here is just really defined in one thing.  I don’t know.  I guess it’s what people want to listen to.

I think WERS tries to break out of that.  Didn’t you guys go play in their studio?

T: Yeah, they’re nice cats.  Other than FNX, [Boston’s radio] is very early 90s.

So, you’ve mentioned clubs, radio, etc.  In terms of how your experience in Boston has been playing the business side of things, how does it compare to that of other cities?

K: In terms of the clubs and rooms we play, I’m a big fan of the Middle East and I love TT the Bear’s Place.  Those are the places I’ll go and hang out as well.  I’ve played in different bands and at different levels and when you’re smaller there are clubs out there that are like, “Cool, so you’ve got the 12:30 slot on a Sunday, and if you don’t bring 50 people I’m not going to pay you.”  It’s this very old school townie thing that’s controlled by these guys who are still around from when there was a bigger scene at one point.

Can you take us through your first big gig in Boston?

T: We played our first Boston show at Copperfield’s, right?  Or was that TT’s?  I think we played with the Visuals and the Sterns, right?  That was the first time I was like, “People are actually HERE! It’s not just friends!”

M: It wasn’t anything special like a CD release or anything.  It was just a Saturday night, but all of a sudden it was packed and everybody was there to see us and we had played something like “Here’s to Waking Up” I could hear people singing words, and it was just random!

T: I remember looking over and being like “?!?!?!” (Laughs)  Initially when you start playing, your friends, roommates and family members feel obligated to go, and they bring their friends, but over time we’ve reached this stage where it’s people who have no connection to the band personally who have heard it from other people.  When someone who has no idea about you personally and is listening to something you’ve done, when someone has your music, that’s pretty awesome.

M: One time I was wearing one of our light blue t-shirts at work –

T: You were wearing the t-shirt of the band you were in?!

Have you not seen “Can’t Hardly Wait”? (laughs)

M: I was wearing the t-shirt and somebody pointed at me and was like, “I love that band!” and I was like “I’m IN this band!”

TT’s is such a special place.  The face that you can hang out with the band and play pool and – well, I just came back from New York and I feel like that doesn’t really exist at some of the city’s more popular venues.

M: Getting done with a show and just going to sit in a green room?  To me, that would be weird.

K: See, that’s why I love TT’s!  I like it BECAUSE there’s a green room.  At Upstairs, it drives me nuts; there’s nowhere to put my gear except on the side.  That’s a lot of equipment that I’ve invested my money in.

So someone could just walk up and…?

K: Well, no, it’s more that somebody’s girlfriend is using it as a seat or as a beer coaster, you know?  And then I’m the dick because I’m like “Hey…” and they’re like “It’s a chair, right?” and I’m like “No, that’s my equipment.”  So, I like that there’s some place to put my gear at TT’s. I’m a really introverted person, especially before and after playing.  I want to be able to go have a cigarette, go chill out, go on and play, get my shit off, go have a cigarette and then chill out again.  I don’t really go to shows so much, partially because I’d just rather play.

T: Beforehand it’s nice to be able to go warm up or just be, but at the Middle East you’re just kind of … there.

M: If it ever got to the point where we just got done with a show that’d be weird to me, to just be sitting there listening on remote speakers or whatever.  I like the fact that I get done with a show and I can go talk to people who just got done listening to it.  I like the small club kind of feel of TT’s and Great Scott.

T: The Middle East downstairs is fun to play.  It’s bigger and it’s nice having the stage space because there’s less chance of getting injured.

K: It doesn’t drop off on the side of the stage, which I like.  Whenever we play Upstairs I always feel like I’m going to fall off.

Have you ever fallen off?

K: No.  I’ve jumped off the stage by accident.

T: I’m actually amazed, at the risk of jinxing ourselves, at the number of shows we’ve played without serious injuries.

K: Well, besides Aaron’s Mac…

A: Yes.

T: Any serious HUMAN injuries, not equipment wise.

What happened?!

A: Kellen threw his bass and it landed on my computer.  Magically, it was okay, just a failed hard drive.

M: I mean, it is missing people by like, coats of paint.  A headstock will go there, and then it’s like, AHH!  But then you open your eyes and everyone’s fine.

Do you guys have any pre-show rituals?

(Everyone cracks up)

Apparently!

T: Aaron’s very particular about his personal space, more so than anyone else I’ve ever met.  Aaron’s [personal space] bubble is ginormous.  At one point, our old bass player and I came up with this tradition of trying to kiss Aaron’s neck before every show.

That’s not nice, boys.

T: I don’t know how much he appreciates the neck kissing, but before every show there’s some attempt to molest him in some way.  Other than that, no other major rituals.

K: Well, you and I drink.

M: I mean, there’s like warm ups and stuff, and I’ll stretch, but there’s no get together to say the Lord’s Prayer (Laughs).

Oh, you’re not Jessica Simpson!  That’s good.

M: Maybe we should have one!

A: NO MORE NECK KISSING.

(Laughs)

In terms of touring and stuff, can you talk about your travels as a band?  Are you guys going to be touring for this next release?

T: The next release is going to be the big push.  It’s going to be the album that we’re going to sink unnecessary amounts of money into to try and promote it and make something happen.

So this next record is going to be your equivalent of a debutante ball, huh?

T: (Laughs) Yeah. We’re going to try to make it as big of a thing as possible.  I think the goal is to tour behind it for at least a couple of weeks.  I mean, we all have jobs and we can’t be gone for a month [from work].  We’re all somewhat responsible sometimes. But, yeah, I’d like to tour behind it.  We’ve done three or four day tours, we’ve taken long weekends, and it’s always fun.  We get along on the road and stuff.

A: But yeah, we haven’t trekked as far as the Midwest yet.

Which is funny, seeing as ¾ from you are from there…

M, K, A: Yeah!

T: We can sell out the Travers City Superdome!

Do you guys have any ridiculous stories from the road?  Any crazy tales from the tour bus?

T: We played this four-day stint with this band The States in New York and Virginia.  It’s like a 6-8 hour drive.  We found out the actual show had been canceled, but this person was hosting a house party kind of thing, so we were like, “Okay, awesome!”  We get there at like 3 or 4 on a Sunday to play it and it was really just like the most suburban neighborhood, and we were playing in, like, a garage.  And there were maybe 15 to 20 people hanging out.

A: Yeah, the girl’s dad was there playing video games.

T: We were all exhausted, and I was like, “This is awesome.  We drove 8 hours to play for 15 people.”  It was really, really fun, like something out of “Almost Famous”… except we’re not actually famous.

M: And then there was that fucking snowstorm, the one we drove back in.

T: Mike is like, a champion driver.  Mike can drive through a river.

M: We were playing a show in New York, and for some reason we decided to just fuck it and drive home.  Someone had to get back to Boston by early morning, so we decided to drive that night, and it was fine, it wasn’t snowing or anything.  I got maybe 30 minutes onto the highway and it was just a complete blizzard by the time I got to Massachusetts.

T: It was kind of funny because I was in the front seat, and I’d be falling asleep, and I’d wake up and Mike would be cursing  – “Son of a bitch! Fuck!”

M: It was literally like, when I got halfway through Connecticut I had to drive 30 miles an hour.  And all of you were asleep!

(Everyone laughs)

K: I tried so hard to stay up with you!  I was like, “Mike, I will stay up with you through this.”  I got in the car and fell asleep.

M: Benson got up and did some trivia with me, but I think he asked me one question and I answered it… and I didn’t find out if it was right or not because he had fallen back asleep.

(Laughs)

T: We got banned from the first venue we ever played… and Aaron got put in a headlock.

What!  Was this here?

T: It was in Connecticut at this venue I played with all the bands I was with in college.  Somebody threw an instrument into this reinforced concrete wall, and the club owner came up and put Aaron in a headlock and was like, “That is something we can NEVER do here! If that goes through the frickin’ wall-“ and I was like “… The back wall is concrete … if it goes through the wall, you just witnessed the most amazing physical event of human nature.”  We were asked not to play the club again.

Aaron, did you actually throw something?

A: I didn’t!  It was him! [Points to Tyler]  and I’M the one who got put in a headlock.  The best part is that the show was recorded, and we got all of that on tape.  There’s an instrumental track on our first album, and I took a snippet of him reaming us out, and I put it on there – it sounds very poetic when he says it: “That is something we can never do!”

That’s fantastic.  Now, let’s talk about your fans in Boston for a bit.

T: WE HAVE FANS?!  (Laughs)

You mention that you have a lot of supportive friends, but what do you love most about playing in Boston?  Do you like the community, and do you feel comfortable seeing as Thick as Thieves plays for so many bands and people that you know personally?

A: The thing that makes Boston so hard in my experience – and I’m guilty of this too – is when someone is like, “Fuck it, it’s gonna rain.  I’m gonna stay home.” (Laughs)

T: If Aaron had a scratching post, he’d stay home.  Aaron is the most cat-like person I know.  “I’d love to go out but there’s this scratchy post with a dangly ball at the top, I don’t know!  It’s going to be hours of fun!”

A: We try to keep things interesting with snippets of videos just working and keeping things transparent as far as things we’re working on.  I find that stuff more interesting to let people read and let them see what’s going on with us, and I guess I’m in the same boat as Kellen where I’m not the one running around after the show being like “Hey!  Did you all have a good time?”

M: I think that our fans are not like, a young crowd, so you can’t do little fun things like, “VOTE ON OUR NEW ALBUM TITLE!” or things like that.

T: Playing all ages shows is a lot of fun and I wish there were more opportunities for that in Boston, but yeah, I think that the whole idea of bands that have four separate fucking Twitter feeds on their page, like, what are you doing?

K: Well then stop it, damn it!

T: I’d rather be like “This is how we’re writing songs” and “This is what we’re working on.”  It’s just to show the actual process.  Our general idea is that you should play your hearts out whether you’re playing for two people or 275.  Either people get it or they don’t, but make sure to keep up with good time or engage them on some level.  It’s loud, and potentially dangerous onstage, and a visceral rock n’ roll experience, but I’d rather see a band doing that and not hitting all the notes than having some safer environment where the band sounds exactly like the CD.

M: After a show I would rather have a beer with the fans and just talk with them, not necessarily about the show but about the Boston music scene or something random.

It sounds like your fans actually dig music and they get music.  It sounds like your fans aren’t running off to go listen to Top 40 on Kiss 108 only.  I think there’s a difference between people who are educated about music and who can appreciate it as opposed to other’s who… don’t.

A: There was a write-up online, and they said something about “ask any musician in Boston and they’ll say Thick as Thieves when they think of guitar rock.” I just don’t think of us as a guitar band really, but I guess some of what we’re doing is in that realm.  It caught me really off-guard when I heard that perspective and it’s definitely something I wouldn’t have assumed.

T: I think in general we’re not involved in the marketing side of things in terms of going out and networking and doing all this stuff.  We want what we do to speak for itself.  I’d rather have people get into the band through the music and the shows and just the stuff we put out than try to push things through a more superficial channel.

K: One time we were playing and I was standing outside having a cigarette and someone’s like, “Are you playing here tonight?” and I said “Yeah.”  And he goes “What band are you with?”  And I said “Thick as Thieves” and he was like “Oh!  I came here to see you guys! I heard you guys on the radio and then I called in and I won, and we came here solely for you!”  And I was like, “Wow.  That’s kind of crazy.”  It’s always kind of a shock.  I think we’re starting to gain a little bit of momentum.  I think people recognize the sticker and the name.

M: (Laughs) Yeah, when I tell people what band I’m in they’re like “I see your sticker EVERYWHERE!”

Yeah, True Believers… had a great cover. So this momentum, has it been building over the past couple of months or is it a more recent happening?

T: I’d say over the past year we’ve been lucky enough to be able to pick and choose what shows we play, whereas before it was like, “Can we get A show?” Now we’re at the stage where it’s like, “Alright, it’s 12:30 on a Friday…”  Hopefully we’re semi-well known enough where it’s not a gamble to say, “Let’s give them a show to set up because they’re at a certain stage.”

K: Well, there was this one guy; he came to the True Believers… CD release, and he was like “Here’s my CD! Here’s my CD!”  He was telling me that his band has a CD they released but that they can’t get a show.  I had to catch myself because they forgot that you have to pay your dues.

T: Yeah.  It’s just the nature of things.