Steal The Audience
This is an excerpt from the free ebook “An Interview with Kryz Reid of Third Eye Blind”
Cris Cohen: So, you mentioned festivals and you had a great line. Someone in an interview asked you about some festival and you said, when it comes to festivals, you guys steal the audience.
First off, just to clarify, what do you mean by you “steal the audience”?
Kryz Reid: Absolutely everybody who is at the festival comes to see us. I mean, it’s just a fact. It’s undeniable. I mean, look at the fucking video I made for Lollapalooza. There was a special needs kid in a wheelchair down in the back. We played “Semi-Charmed Life” and his mates fucking lifted him up in this fucking wheelchair and he crowd surfed to the front of the fucking stage. And then when he got to the front of the stage, they were going to put him down into the pit. And Stephan was like, “Uh-uh.” He got the security to put him on the stage.
Anyway, I made a video about it because it was an amazing moment really. And we were all very moved by it.
But secondary to that, if you look at that audience — it was Lollapalooza in Chicago — and you can see all the kids are facing this way. It’s just this fucking sea of people. And I don’t know how they do it, but they work out the attendance (for each act). They go, “Okay, so you guys took this (many) and they took that (many).” And it’s like, our shit is always fucking (raises his hand up high).
Cris Cohen: Well then, that begs the question: How do you steal an audience? Because there are tons of these festivals, and that’s right now a great way for bands to get exposure and stuff like that. But you’re going up sometimes against more experienced acts, and there’s multiple stages going. So, how does a band artfully steal an audience?
Kryz Reid: Well, I think by reputation, the band’s live reputation. I’m going to say that twice. But it’s just our live reputation. I think people who come to see us come back to see us. I mean, that’s just a fact as well. When we play all these venues, they’re all sold out.
There are some bands that you go to see and you go, “All right, I get it.” And then you’re like, “No, I saw them. They come out and they press play on their fucking Mac. And then they kind of jump around with the guitar.”
Hey, it’s cool, man. Live and let live. Everyone does their thing. Whatever. I love some of those bands, you know what I mean?
But when you come to see us, if you guys could hear what goes on, if you saw that soundcheck… Right now, we’re obsessed with medleys. So, at one point in tonight’s set, we’re going to play eight fucking songs in a row. They all just go into each other. And we change it up every day. Today we’ve changed it up again. And you can’t do that if you’re one of those preprogrammed bands.
We did a gig… I shouldn’t even… maybe I can tell the story.
We did a gig. I won’t mention any names, but there was a band that was on the same festival that we were on. And it was like their hometown. So, their drummer had his girlfriend at the show. (While) the band was doing the set, I guess his girlfriend went onto the tour bus, found his phone, and found a whole load of fucking shit that he was up to — nefarious activity — on tour.
She came onto the stage while they were playing. She took his laptop and smashed it, (smashed) his phone. Came on the stage and started fucking beating the shit out of him. And he’s up there drumming, but they’ve got the tracks going and he can’t stop. He can’t fucking do anything.
And I was just going, “That’s why you don’t play to tracks.”
Cris Cohen: Oh, Jesus.
Kryz Reid: But yeah, for us, it’s just like, whatever’s on the spirit of the moment. We can just shift it around. And Jenkins has a very short attention span. So he will constantly go, “Oh wait, no. Let’s…” And we’ll just change something on the fly. We’ll come off stage and go, “You guys want to play (names a song)?” We’ll be like, “Fuck it, yeah.”
I think people respond to that immediacy. All of our shows are always different and they’re always totally live. And Stephan’s compelling to see live. He’s very… what would you say? He’s very free on stage. And so, there’s just a sense of, “This motherfucker could potentially do anything up there.” And that’s scary. And it’s awesome.
I saw Beyonce play, and it was just perfect. Everything about it was perfect. And I was totally bored. I was just going, “This is amazing. You are amazing, but I don’t ever need to see that again.”
So, we’re not perfect, but we are amazing.
