words & photo by Kaitlyn Emslie Farrell
There’s zigging and zagging and, unfortunately, some people are swagging. When it comes to Taylor Benjamin Burgess, David Skene and Steph “what the fuck” Kolbuck and their band, The Zags, there’s no confusion. Forming in December of 2012, The Zags have been hiding away and only popping up to tease the city every once in awhile. Stylus met up with Taylor and David at a local Tutti Frutti and they told us some stuff.
Stylus: What are The Zags all about?
Taylor Benjamin Burgess: Right now we’re playing really poppy tunes. Really poppy/punk tunes. Not pop-punk. Kind of post punk. It was a really natural fit for us to start playing. We just started jamming. And what we’ve been jamming has been the direction we’ve headed so far. We’ve been pretty quiet about things.
David Skene: Yeah, I’m not like, beating anyone over the head with our band. We’ve actually been trying not to play a lot of shows for a couple different reasons. One, it keeps a show special and exciting. Also, it has like given us time to work on our sound and playing as a band in a way that you don’t get when you get heavy into playing shows. When you know what you’re doing, you just go right into shows. Shows end up taking up all your time.
Stylus: Once you’ve got more stuff are you going to play more shows?
TBB: I think we have a good pace right now.
DS: We just really wanted to get ready to record, that was the big thing for us for that time period. And who wants to play shows in the winter? It’s really cold.
TBB: I’m ok with how few shows we play.
DS: I like playing shows at non-traditional venues.
TBB: Not to rag on traditional venues, but you’re a band in a bar playing your music that sounds like rock and roll or punk. What is the draw for someone to see you? So we’re just trying to get outside of that little box.
DS: There’s only so many venues in Winnipeg that you can play. There’s still a couple that I haven’t played. There’s a couple that I can’t play again.
TBB: [laughs] Have you been banned from venues?
DS: Two or three. But the cool thing about playing non-traditional venues is it’s a different experience and the way things go is very different. It’s a different thing when you show up. You show up and you don’t know what’s going to happen. Is there a PA there? Are people going to be able to find this place? And then also the most important reason about not playing a traditional venue is it puts the focus on the music, not on alcohol sales. And there’s a focus in the audience that you just don’t get at a bar.
Stylus: Say hypothetically Taylor booked a show somewhere David was banned from. What would you do?
DS: Buy a fake moustache. A lot of the venues I’ve been kicked out of aren’t around anymore. Red Cactus I got thrown out Uncle Phil style. They grabbed me by the strap of my pants and threw me out the back door. And then Manic Shakes accidentally put a hole in the stage at The Cheer, so we can’t go back there.
Stylus: So your first release in on cassette?
TBB: This is our first release. We had some songs up on Souncloud but those are just demos to let people know what we sound like and to make it easier to book shows.
DS: When we started we had a meeting where we set a bunch of goals and one of them was to do a cassette release. Our sound just feels better on cassette tape. It’s not an ironic “oh nobody listens to casettes anymore, let’s release it on that because it’s so anachronistic.” We’re living in a time where the physical media you release your songs on is either a) meaningless or b) secondary, cause hardly anybody is actually going to interact with it in it’s physical medium.
Stylus: Any plans for the future other than the album?
DS: One of the philosophies of The Zags is that just when you think you know who we are we’re going to zag.
TBB: We want to record with Riley Hill again. He’s so awesome.
DS: Good producers have a little bit of Jedi mind reading power.
TBB: Yeah, he gets us.
DS: And sometimes they’re also a little Batman with being the producer you need, not the producer you want. We brought him here (Tutti Futti) and we made him an ice cream Sunday. We put the first spoonful in his mouth, and we said, “We want our album to sound how that tastes.”
TBB: And he’s doing it and it’s awesome. It’s pretty sweet and sugary.
Stylus: Anything on behalf of Steph?
DS: If Steph was here she’d be saying something like, “Oh, you know, stuff.”
TBB: She keeps getting complimented that she just sticks bubblegum in her mouth and plays drums. It’s the best act The Zags have going right now, is when she does her spaced out bubblegum chew.
Keep an eye out for the cassette release show of The Zags coming up May 24th at the Purple Room