Interview: The Prize Fighter Inferno Stop By the Royale As Part of Their First-Ever Tour
Along with being an incredible guitarist, Claudio Sanchez from the Nyack, New York prog-rock phenoms Coheed and Cambria is a fantastic songwriter. His fusing of the band’s music with his comic book series The Amory Wars is still an extraordinary approach nearly 30 years later after the band initially started out. With this being said, Sanchez’ side project The Prize Fighter Inferno best exemplifies his songwriting chops and he, his wife Chondra Echert and keyboardist Dave Parker are currently embarking on it’s first-ever expedition. One of the stops includes a gig at the Royale on 279 Tremont Street within Boston’s Theater District on February 21 as part of their “Before They Bury Me Tour”. Indie pop artist Carobae is going to be kicking the night off at 8:30pm.
Sanchez and I had a talk ahead of the show about things lining up to finally take The Prize Fighter Inferno out on the road, a couple music videos that were recently released, whether or not The Amory Wars will ever be made into a film and aiming to create a stripped-down intimate experience.
What was the initial catalyst for you and your wife wanting to take this project out on the road for the first time after you started it back in the late ‘90s? Was it simply a scheduling thing where you had some time available to do this or was it something else?
It was a little bit of both, but definitely the scheduling because it turns out that my son Atlas really likes the lifestyle. He likes traveling on a bus and it happens to be that this tour is taking place during his mid-winter recess, so we thought instead of taking a vacation why not do this tour? That’s why it was planned so far in advance, we figured that we’d try doing these live performances and Atlas can spend a week or two out on the road for his vacation. That’s part of what made it make sense for us, but also at the time when I first created The Prize Fighter Inferno I loved having the idea of having an outlet of trying to do other things. Back then, I knew going out on tour would be putting Coheed on hold and I just didn’t feel right doing that, there’s a sense of guilt that comes with that.
Now I think as we’re older and everyone has got other things, there’s less guilt involved with doing it. Those were pretty much the two big factors.
Back on February 6, The Prize Fighter Inferno released a music video for the song “Virtual Pioneers” which was filmed in a home studio surrounded by collectibles and various framed photos and posters. Who had the idea for the music video to be done in this setting?
That room is actually our library in our house and it felt like the most interesting room to utilize. We had a weekend to shoot a video, I wanted to cram two in and we did them both in the house with Dave on keyboards and Ernie Falconer, who did the filming and is also Coheed’s tour manager. We had two days so we wanted to figure out the most creative ways to get these videos done. That room to me felt like the right room, so I lit it in a way that gave it a warm glow and we figured that we’d do a performance video in there. The other video for “The Going Price For Home”, which came out on Valentine’s Day, was actually a collaboration between my wife and I.
We thought it made sense for the holiday, so that was it. It was us thinking of what we could do with the time that we had.
I thought the visual aesthetic of the music video for “Virtual Pioneers” was really cool with all the posters, collectibles and everything else. Fans of Coheed and Cambria know about most of the band’s music coinciding with the comic book series you created called The Amory Wars, so is The Prize Fighter Inferno connected to that as well? If so, then in which ways is this project connected to the comics?
When I first created the idea, I was young and I was trying to figure out ways to make everything connect. I sort of forced this idea of having the story connect in a certain way. Initially the idea for The Prize Fighter Inferno and the actual title for the project was a visual I had of these prize fighters in a ring in a Royal Rumble kind of fashion where each of them resembled an emotion of self. They were each fighting for dominance over how a person would feel, does that make any sense?
Yeah, that’s a really cool metaphor.
Right, so that was my initial idea, but because it’s The Prize Fighter Inferno, I then used it to create the character of Inferno while utilizing the prize as a being within the story. I was just trying to figure out ways to make this thing connect and as time went on, I realized that wasn’t the best idea. The first album My Brother’s Blood Machine does have a comic book tie-in that came out last year, but looking at them now the stories do kind of stand on their own. The remaining records that I’ve done with this project don’t really have a literary counterpart, so at one point I wanted to try to connect them but time unveiled that it was unnecessary.
For over a decade now, films based on comic books have become its own industry, especially with the success Marvel has had with it over the years. What are your thoughts on this as a comic book creator and as a fan? Do you like it being put forth in this medium or do you feel that it waters it down when it comes to the aesthetics of comics?
It’s tough and it’s everything, but I think ultimately it’s good for the medium because it attracts people who aren’t necessarily readers. That’s one thing I’ve found as a writer of comics and being in a band, when I go into retailers, do signings and things like that, there would be this appreciation of me doing this and bringing in new readership. At one point, I maybe felt more negative about it because I held this medium so precious and I felt like it was such an easy thing to do adaptations and have people fall into a world. At the same time, you’re bringing attention to something and I think that is a good thing.
That’s a good view to have on it. With The Amory Wars, I know there’s been some developments over the years to make it into a film, including at one point you were collaborating with Mark Wahlberg. Have there been any recent developments with this or is it still kind of up in the air when it comes to doing a film version of the comic book series?
It’s still up in the air. We’ve been actively pursuing the concept with a screenwriter and agents at William Morris. I think for something like this to happen, and I always say this to management, it’s going to take a fan. It’s going to take somebody who loves this and who’s grown up with this to fall into the right position to make it happen. That’s how I feel about it, we could get a call tomorrow and it’s Quentin Tarantino telling us that he’s not going to retire and he wants to make our crazy fuckin’ story (laughs). That could happen, but chances are that I feel like somebody who is really invested, they’ve grown up with it and it’s in their blood is going to be the one to make it happen.
I can see why you feel this way about the project. For the upcoming show at the Royale, what can people expect? Will it just be you, Chondra and Dave performing as a trio or will you be joined by a full-fledged band? Are you aiming for a stripped-down intimate experience?
Yeah, I think so. At this moment, it’s going to be a stripped-down sort of experience. I think it’s going to be fun, you’re going to see myself and my wife in a way that maybe we haven’t before. We collaborate on the comics and we collaborate on so much stuff that it makes sense for us to do something musical like this. Because it is the first time, I don’t know what this will ultimately be in the future so I want it to be special.
Sometimes with a band, there’s so much space taken up. Not only on the stage, clearly, but sonically as well and I really want this to be about the voices, so we’ll see. Depending on how this goes, there might be different incarnations of the project in the future but at this moment we just want it to be small, intimate and fun.
In order to make Culture Beat’s content available to everyone, we decided to stop utilizing a paywall. With this being said, we are utilizing the crowdfunding service Buy Me A Coffee in order to have our readers support our endeavors, which they can do so right here.
