Crash Kings are a trio that could be mistaken for a side project of Jack White mixed with a little Cold War Kids and even a surprise dash of Queen, which actually makes them a refreshingly unique sound that’s still familiar enough to give you warm fuzzies when a tune of theirs pops up on the radio. With the success of “Mountain Man” on the airwaves, a tour with JET and SXSW upcoming, bassist Mike Beliveau took some time to talk to PopWreckoning about the band’s rise, dream tours and sports.
Bethany, PopWreckoning: Hi. How are you today Mike?
Mike Beliveau, Crash Kings: I’m alright. I’m getting a little sick, but doing alright.
PW: Oh no. Maybe you’ll feel better not that you have a nice day in the Midwest – you’re in Omaha tonight.
MB: Yeah. We’re on our way over to the venue to load in right now.
PW: Ok. Let’s start at the beginning. I know the three of you were in other bands before, but you were still together. How did you go from those bands into becoming the Crash Kings?
MB: Tony (vox) and I are brothers, so we’ve been playing music together since we were teenagers in high school. We had a band in high school and then Tony went off to college in Texas, but I convinced him to move back to Boston to start up a band again in college. We had two bands together and then Tony met Jason, our drummer, while on tour with Sierra Swan. They were backing her. She’s a singer/songwriter. That’s how we met Jason. So, when we were recording the Crash Kings together, Tony suggested Jason as our drummer and it was pretty much perfect from the start and a great fit. So we went with it. 
PW: Ok, I think somehow I got confused and thought Jason had been in the bands before with both you and Tony from online reading.
MB: Yeah, well Tony and Jason had been in a band before from touring backing Sierra Swan. I wasn’t in that band, no.
PW: I also read you guys used to do more jazz sort of music. How’d you go from that to what you’re doing now? Was it a natural progression?
MB: Actually, we went from rock to jazz back to rock. Crash Kings, I’ve always thought of it as a return to our roots. When we were in high school, we were very much a rock sort of band and Tony was singing. Our band in college, we decided to do a more sort of jazz/artsy/organ trio thing without vocals. We were just always experiment and pushing ourselves as much as we could with odd meters and different keyboards. Tony got into playing organ and Rhodes and different synthesizers. It was pretty much all experimentation with that band. It was called Odion. And then Tony started writing songs again that were rock songs and it seemed like a great idea to have a rock band again. That’s pretty much it. So yeah, it was natural for us to play rock again. It wasn’t out of our natural vain of writing. We grew up on it.
PW: One of the first things that I think people notice when they see you live is that you have a clavinet with a whammy bar. How did you come up with the idea for a whammy bar on this keyboard basically?
MB: It’s kind of a, well the instrument found us in a lucky moment. Tony was going to borrow a keyboard from a friend and ended up with this great keyboard because they couldn’t find the original one that they were looking for, so he brought this back to the studio and was like, “Hey, Mike. You have to come check this thing out. It’s crazy. It has a whammy bar.” It’s a pretty rare thing. So we got to the studio and were both like, “Woah.” The ideas for the instrument started forming; we can distort this thing or make it sound like guitar. Basically what it is, it’s an electric guitar in a keyboard format. It has guitar strings and the whammy bar is a classic element of a guitar, so we thought it would work great in a rock band. That’s how that instrument came to be in our band.
PW: There are only three of you in the Crash Kings, so I notice you get a lot of Muse comparisons, but it almost seems to be by default as in here’s one threesome, must be like another. I’m not sure I get that as much. What do you think of that comparison, are there other bands that you think is a more apt comparison or would cite as influences?
MB: You can compare us to Muse because we’re a power trio: a rock power trio. Those elements are there. I think the songwriting is quite different and the lyrics are quite different. We’re fans of Muse and we think they’re doing great things. They brought an element to rock and roll that wasn’t there before. It’s big and they’ve got a big sound and that’s kind of what we’re going for. I can see how people would compare us to them, but people compare us to other bands as well. I don’t know who I’d want to be compared to, but I always love hearing when people compare us to bands that I like. So when people say, “Oh, you sound like Muse,” that makes sense to me. We listen to Muse and we like Muse. If they say a band that I don’t like, then I’m like, “Oh no. We don’t listen to that. Why would we get that comparison?” Everyone makes comparisons, but you end up sounding like your own in the end.
PW: Ok. If you could do a dream tour with your favorite bands, who would you bring on that—living or dead?
MB: We’d love to open for Led Zeppelin.
PW: I could see that.
MB: Another band…Muse would be a great band to open for, kind of a dream, current band.
PW: Ok, you’re about to go out on tour with JET and you’re hitting up SXSW, do you have like a festival or tour survival kit? Like do you have essentials that you have to have with you on the road?
MB: Essentials is exactly what it is. We try to not bring too much stuff. The essentials are just what you’d think they are: clothes and toiletries. Something unique to the band…it’s hard to say. Water? Five-hour energy! That’s a good one. A lot of times, we’re driving through the night and that helps whomever is driving stay up through the night. Cough drops. Those are kind of essentials. 
PW: What are some of the advantages of playing with your brother in a band and what are some of the disadvantages of playing with your brother in a band?
MB: Musically, there are no disadvantages. It’s just pretty much that Tony is my favorite person to play music with because we know each other so well. I know exactly what he’s going to do almost before he does it. We just have a strong chemistry that way. We have very close musical influences, so when it comes to writing and arranging the songs, we can do it pretty easily 99 percent of the time. Musically, it is great. A disadvantage, as anybody that has a sibling knows, there’s always sibling rivalry. We always end up getting at each other’s throats at times, but we’ve grown in that a little bit and found ways of being tolerant of each other. It can get hairy, as you can imagine, with your sibling on the road. You find little things that bother you that wouldn’t bother you in anywhere else.
PW: Haha, yeah. I have siblings. I love them, but I can’t imagine touring with them.
MB: Haha, yeah.
PW: I know that you and Tony are both really big into skiing, but I don’t think Jason is quite as much – I think I read that during the “Mountain Man” video that Jason hung out in the lodge drinking cocoa rather than ski—However, with winter drawing to a close, do you have summer sports that you’re really into?
MB: Yeah. Tony and I are both surfers, but we’re not as big surfers as we are skiers. We love going out into the water. Tony loves to mountain bike and got me into it recently, so mountain biking is sort of our summer skiing. It’s pretty similar: going down a mountain and all that. Those sports and I’ll take part in a game of soccer every once in awhile.
PW: Nice. Is there anything that you wish people knew about your band that they don’t now and you’d like to share while you have this open forum?
MB: Um. Good question. Maybe people don’t know that we don’t use any backing tracks in our band, which is becoming more and more common with bands these days. One thing we try to do with our band is keep it really raw, simple and alive. So everything you’re hearing at the live show is what’s being played on stage. Not that that’s better or worse, but I think it actually makes our band unique these days because so many bands do use backing tracks today. We try to keep an old school feel like you’re getting an old school live performance.
PW: Nice. That is good to know and it really becoming so common with the backing tracks that people are probably just assuming that bands are using them. It shows in your live show, too. I saw you a few weeks ago with OK Go and it was more raw and authentic. It was better than hearing you on the radio.
MB: Yeah. Excellent.
PW: Well, I know you’re trying to do load-in, so I’ll let you go do that.
MB: Thank-you very much.
PW: Thank-you, feel better and have a great show tonight.
