Kids at the Bar producer/DJ duo Chad “Rad” Raunborg and Matt Buckley had a tough job this fall while on tour with The Sounds, The Limousines and Natalia Kills. They were the lone producer/DJ act on the bill and they had to keep the crowd hype, and motivated, while not being singers or emcees. They accomplished this by turning the event spaces they were in into their own personal nightclubs, and in the process they proved that no matter what genre of music a person is a fan of, dance is a universal language.
Everyone they were on the bill with took notice, and Rad and Matt will be hitting the road with The Sounds and The Limousines again from January 26th through March 3rd, this time in Europe. Before they set out to rock another continent, however, Substream Music Press caught up with Rad to find out about the evolution of their music, the built in focus group they have when they’re working on new remixes, and how two guys who are rarely at the bar ended up calling themselves Kids at the Bar.
Substream Music Press: Let’s start from the beginning. How did two guys from Oklahoma City get into electronic music and start making remixes?
Rad: It was a totally random thing because Matt and I are both rock n roll kids, we both worked with bands, played in bands, and all kinds of stuff like that, so getting into dance music was totally random. One of our friends was a DJ and he had us come DJ one night and do a party. I heard a bunch of tracks and I was like “man, this sounds really cool.” There were all these songs with sawtooth synth run through distortion pedals, super grimy, almost metal, stuff. I was like, that’s awesome. We got into that, and liking all that type of music, and then finally we were like we should start doing remixes. We did a remix for one of our friends, John Bourke, and it kind of took off from there. After that we started doing all this crazy stuff.
SMP: You mentioned were in bands. Do you think knowing how to play instruments made the process of remixing easier?
R: It kinda did, but it kinda didn’t. From the production point, yeah, but because of our song structure, we tried to write rock songs and we had to totally rethink and reform our theories on how to structure a song because dance songs are way different than rock and pop stuff.
SMP: You’re not stuck with the structure of 16 bars, chorus.
R: Yeah, but now all the pop stuff, and even some of the rock stuff, is conforming to the dance theory now, which is kind of funny.
SMP: Why do you think electronic music has infiltrated mainstream pop the way it has?
R: I don’t know. I think it’s just one of those things were there are so many talented producers, and it’s kind of a new thing, and people are kind of sick of the slower tempo stuff, and I think they just want something that’s a little more upbeat and kinda catchy, and all these producers are making songs that are better than the pop stuff was two years ago so now all these pop singers and labels are trying to hop on that train.
SMP: When you first got aboard that train what kind of equipment were you using and how long did it take to really learn it all and take it all in?
R: I started with Ableton and it took me probably like six months. I sat there and watched tutorials and read a bunch of stuff and then I kind of got the hang of it and wrote a couple songs. When I hooked up with Matt he had been using Pro Tools for several years and I was like dude, you’re way better at Pro Tools than I will ever be at Ableton, or any of these other programs, so I switched over and started working with him on Pro Tools.
SMP: Are you guys roommates at this point?
R: We actually just became roommates recently, probably about three months ago, right before we went on The Sounds tour. We had never actually lived together or anything, we had a studio in either his house or my house and just worked together, but he recently moved in which is nice and convenient.
SMP: How thrilled are your neighbors?
R: They’re actually fans of ours, so it works out really well. We live in a duplex and we live upstairs. We’ve turned it up pretty loud and had the sub in there and they don’t seem to mind it. I think they’re just downstairs dancing or something.
SMP: That’s good, and I guess you’ll know if you screw up a song because they’ll come knockin on the door like “guys, this isn’t doing it for us, tweak it.”
R: I’m sure. I’m sure they get sick of listening to the same hook for four hours straight if we’re trying to figure out a melody or a bass line and they’re just like “dude, what is up with this song, it’s like two hours long.” We had the luxury of not having neighbors for probably about a month straight so we would just work all night long. Now that we do we’re a little more cautious and considerate, but I don’t know how long that’s gonna last. The house is super old, too, so you can hear everything, especially a bunch of low frequencies.
SMP: A lot of people heard you at SXSW, Burning Man, the Ultra Music Festival, and most recently the US tour w/ The Sounds, The Limousines and Natalia Kills. What have been some of your most memorable moments from those experiences?
R: I would have to say Burning Man has probably been the craziest experience we’ve ever had. Being from Oklahoma we don’t get to experience a lot of festivals, so when we drove out there we just had this whole mindset that it was not gonna be our thing – a bunch of hippies running around naked- and we got out there and we were riding on these art cars, hanging out with all these crazy people and it was probably one of the best experiences of my life.
SMP: So you’re definitely looking to do that again.
R: Yeah, we didn’t do it this year, but I think for sure we’re going back next year to play because we talk about it probably like once a week, how much we miss it.
SMP: What was the one thing that really stood out to you about that experience?
R: Everybody was so nice and generous. You could walk around anywhere and if you wanted food people would hand you food. Everybody just wanted to have a good time. It was such a positive vibe. Everybody was dancing and going hard till like seven or eight in the morning every single night and then they would sleep for like two hours and get up and do it again.
SMP: What are some of the intricacies of rocking a crowd without using your voice?
R: That’s been a big challenge, especially being on a rock n roll tour with The Sounds. It’s one of those things where you have to win over the crowd. It’s a lot of song selection and figuring out what the crowd’s gonna be into. On that whole six week tour it probably took us about a week and a half to figure out what worked for different crowds in different cities. I think it was playing some stuff that’s familiar and then dropping some heavier stuff and introducing them to stuff they probably wouldn’t hear except at a club or festival.
SMP: Your album, Exile, came out on Killpop Records.
R: It came out in early 2010. It was kind of like our first go at trying to do a dance record, but it was kind of funny because a lot of those songs were in the phase where we were trying to incorporate some rock n roll stuff into it so we grabbed some of our friends who sing in rock bands and had them jam on it. We were still doing the indie stuff but then transitioning to some more club music. After we released that album we finally started playing some festivals, before we were just playing smaller clubs so we didn’t really get a feel for what people were playing out there, but once we started playing festivals we started hearing what all these bigger DJs were playing and it kind of gave us an awakening, so I think our style of music has probably totally changed from when we released Exile.
SMP: So maybe Exile should be left in exile?
R: Yes, exactly.
SMP: If someone is looking to hear music from you is your Soundcloud page a better destination?
R: For sure, yeah. Our Soundcloud is our most up to date with our remixes and usually we try to give all the stuff away for free as soon as possible.
SMP: The mixes I saw were 20-30 minutes, do you have a longer one in the works?
R: Yeah, this next one is gonna be about an hour and ten, an hour and twenty minutes.
SMP: So you’ll still be able to burn it onto a CD.
R: Hopefully. We actually, for this tour we printed off a ton of CDs to hand out. That was kind of cool because we’d never printed them out, or had a need to, actually, so it was cool playing a bunch of shows and kids wanting CDs.
SMP: Who’s currently on your wish list of who you’d like to work with?
R: I just want to work with people who are our friends, like Lucky Day. We did a track with our friend Curtis Lee. Kill the Noise is one of our favorites, and Bloody Beetroots are kinda like our idols because those guys do the whole dance/punk rock thing and we’re always inspired by those guys, so any chance to work with them would be amazing.
SMP: Finally, how often are Kids at the Bar at the bar?
R: {laughs} We are never at the bar, which is funny. I think the only time we’re at the bar is if we’re actually playing a show.
SMP: So how’d you get the name Kids at the Bar?
R: We were debating on whether it was gonna be Kids in the Bar or Kids at the Bar because at the time, when we were DJing these little indie dance parties, those were the only people that we played for, all these people at the bar, and they got uber wasted and they would just act like kids and immature little children, so we were like “man, we should just be Kids at the Bar.”
SMP: So your name is a reflection of your original audience rather than yourself.
R: Exactly.
Interview by Adam Bernard
