It was a concert that a lot of people were waiting for and as it turned out Starbenders themselves were just as impatient as we were. The excitement of bassist Aaron Lecesne and guitarist Kriss Tokaji was evident just an hour before they were due to perform in Athens where we chatted with them, while also seemed genuinely ready to take the next big step in their career. Our conversation didn’t only revolver around Starbenders as we didn’t fail to mention the topic of the future of rock n’ roll and not only… Interview : Sakis Nikas – Camera: Yannis Dolas – Editing/Post Production: OneManArmy
Rockpages.gr: What do you remember from your last shows in Athens with Palaye Royale?
Aaron Lecense: Mostly how tired we were. That was coming off the end of, like, three months. But I also remember how it was two different shows. And every night the energy was the same because weren’t they both sold out?
Kriss Tokaji: Yeah, they were… Gagarin. The reception was beautiful from everyone, you know? We’ve always had our ambitions of coming to Europe and to Greece, you know, like, just like specifically to Greece, you know, having our manager be from there, it’s always been like on our list to one of the main countries we wanted to come to. So it’s like really cool to have played for a huge crowd two nights in a row, you know? And then we gained a lot of fans, you know, that were like asking us constantly for the past year to come back as soon as possible.
Aaron Lecense: So, that’s what we did.
Kriss Tokaji: Yeah, we made a point to have our own show, our own headline show in Greece.
Rockpages.gr: Gene Simmons claimed that “rock is dead”. Do you agree with that statement?
Kriss Tokaji: I think Gene Simmons is wrong!
Aaron Lecense: Yeah. And rock and roll never went anywhere. Like, it’s not a genre. It’s just an attitude. I mean, I just. I never understood why people tried to reduce it down into something that was, you know, confined to a decade or confined to a certain set of esthetics. No, it’s an attitude and it’s it’s not dead. And it’s not dying and it’s never going anywhere.
Kriss Tokaji: And I think if you look at a lot of the big festivals, there’s a lot of rock bands from all over the world. I guess the media likes to pull people’s attention toward the pop stars, so to speak, or just like music that’s kind of being put above everything else. But I feel like there’s a really strong underground kind of culture still and there always will be, because I think that’s just rock music to me is the kind of music that, people get transformed by more than anything.
Rockpages.gr: Do you think that rock music is going to be mainstream ever again?
Kriss Tokaji: I think it’s headed that way, honestly, I really do. We always cite Maneskin from Italy as a band that’s kind of broken a lot of people’s perception of where rock music is. And, you know, I think it’s a band of kids essentially playing guitars, And screaming in the microphone, drums in the works. There is kind of a paradigm shift happening as we speak. And I think more and more people are shifting their attention to. I think social media has a lot to do with that too.
It’s not like rock and roll music being shunned away per se. I think it’s getting more embraced even in social media culture. And Tik Tok, a lot of songs that do really well on Tik Tok are rock songs. So, I think we are going to get to a point where it’s like back in the eighties or even the seventies and sixties…
It’ll look different, obviously, it’ll be that energy. Rock, more than anything, is an attitude and a in a way that an artist carries themselves. Even a lot of a lot of pop artists are adopting the rock look. And it’s like, “yes, that’s not yours, but you can take it if you want! You can try, give your best shot”!
Rockpages.gr: How can you describe Starbenders’ style of music?
Aaron Lecense: We gave up trying. We don’t even try anymore. We would just say rock and roll. I mean, it’s sounds like we look.
Kriss Tokaji: We listen to all types of music, you know what I mean? Obviously, we’re very influenced by a lot of hard rock from the seventies and eighties. And then, we’re also influenced by a lot of the alternative music from the eighties and nineties and whether it’s grunge or goth or post-punk. I think those are the ones that we feel most connected to. I think like it’s kind of the sort of energy we feel most connected to. But, you know, we have songs that are definitely more pop leaning. Also, being from Atlanta, we were influenced by hip hop, too, because it’s it’s just the music we grew up around. Or it was always in the peripheral, even if we weren’t necessarily like listening to it at the time; it was around us.
Basically, all the music that we love, whether or not it’s rock music just kind of filters into our sound somehow.
Rockpages.gr: Which album would you take with you if you were stranded on a desert island?
Aaron Lecens: …it has to fit the esthetic, you know, and has to be something that you’re like you want to listen to for the rest of your life, which probably is going to be short if you’re on a desert island. So yeah, right. It’s like the soundtrack to your eventual death by… dehydration. Am I helping?
Kriss Tokaji: “Zeppelin IV”… that’s probably my favorite album ever. To me it’s perfect in every way.
Aaron Lecense: We were playing a bunch of like Deftones earlier in the green room?
Kriss Tokaji: Yes.
Aaron Lecense: “Around The Fur” by Deftones. Yeah.
