Interview by Rachel Jablonski
Special thanks to Ryan Onstad of Lincoln, Nebraska for his continuous friendship, support of our efforts, and for his interview assistance on the following. I was fortunate enough to speak with Kalel, bassist of Oklahoma based Pillar, while on the road with Project 86. Here's is everything you need to know about the band... and possibly more.
Rachel: Where are ya at right now?
Kalel: We are in San Antonio, Texas.
Rachel: Cool. Is it pretty nice down there?
Kalel: Yeah, it really is. It’s perfect weather right now.
Rachel: Do you have a show tonight?
Kalel: Yeah, we have a show tonight. We have four in a row and then we’re done with the tour.
Rachel: Then what?
Kalel: And then we get to go home for Thanksgiving which will be nice and then we go to Europe on December 1st.
Rachel: Oh wow. Who are you with in Europe?
Kalel: Um, there are two festivals. I think Project 86 is going to be there and the promoters always bring over a big handful of bands from the U.S. so… I’m not entirely sure, but I’m sure there will be a bunch of bands that we know.
Rachel: I’m living in Iowa right now and I’m upset because you guys had a show in Iowa City with Project 86 and it was cancelled, but…
Kalel: Yeah, that stinks. They cancelled it awhile ago and I heard that wherever the promoter booked the show, the venue closed down.
Rachel: [laughs] Are you serious?
Kalel: Yeah, I don’t know if he didn’t want to switch and find a new place, but he just pulled it. So it was kind of out of our hands.
Rachel: Yeah, that sucks. I’ll catch ya some other time.
Kalel: Yeah, or you might have to drive sometime. We honestly don’t play Iowa very much I don’t know why. We used to play Des Moines, but we haven’t for a long time.
Rachel: Yeah, I missed you this tour when you were in Nebraska last too. But ok well first off, for listeners who aren’t familiar with you, where are you coming from musically and what should everyone know about the band?
Kalel: Well we’re a band called Pillar from Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been around for about seven years now and we have three albums out. We are all Christians in our band and we are just using music to go out there and play and hopefully God will be working through our music and our talents to touch people.
Rachel: Where Do We Go From Here is your third full length album. A lot of people say it’s your best. Do you feel like it’s a breakthrough album? It seems like you’re really gaining popularity through this album. How do you feel about that?
Kalel: I don’t think this is so much a make or break album. I feel like our last album actually was that album for us. First albums are only kinda whatever. Our first album did all right, it wasn’t necessarily amazing. The second album though has helped to put us where we are now. It’s not like we’re huge or anything, but it really helped us with our career. Fireproof and that particularly song, “Fireproof,” that was kind of the album that really gave us the momentum to take this album where it needs to go. So we’ve had a lot of great things happen since the new album Where Do We Go from Here has come out. A lot of cool opportunities have come along and I just see the opportunities keep coming in.
Rachel: “Bring me Down” has gotten a ton of airplay and you guys have been all over – Fuse’s “Next Big Thing,” on “Joan of Arcadia,” and stuff like that. What else would you like to see happen? How are these things affecting the band?
Kalel: We’ve been doing this for a long time so this is all just the same stuff. Interviews are interviews and shows are shows. What we’d honestly like to see happen though if it hasn’t happened already is like it’d be cool for one of our songs to be on a major motion picture soundtrack. It would be cool in 2005, we’re actually shopping around right now to get on a big tour, ya know open up for a big mainstream band. We’re doing our own headlining tour in the spring so it’s already getting set up now. And it would be really cool for our next, active rock radio single to do really well. I think they’re re-releasing “Hypnotize” in late January.
Rachel: Kind of a typical question here, but what’s the meaning or purpose or inspiration behind your new disc? Is there a main theme or what were you trying to hit people with?
Kalel: Honestly, when we write albums we don’t really sit down and say ok we’re going to try to talk about these subjects. All the songs on the album are just about real stuff, stuff that we deal with on a daily basis and a lot of people deal with. The title of the album is Where Do We Go from Here, that idea actually comes from the song “Hypnotize,” and it’s not a question of where our band’s going, it doesn’t have anything to do with Pillar, the question is just for everybody. What are you doing in your life right now and where are you going next? That’s up to you. A lot of that stuff comes through in the lyrics. It’s just basic stuff that everybody deals with everyday. We like to put a positive spin on stuff. We get tired of all the negative music out there that tries to drag people down.
Rachel: So you take a positive approach.
Kalel: Oh yeah, there’s already so much negative crap out there that when you listen to it you just want to go drive off the road or drive into somebody else. So we just try to take a positive spin on everything.
Rachel: What place, if any, do you feel you have in the Christian music world? Do you still consider yourselves in that realm? Being a Christian band, do you have any specific reactions from people or are you just considered a band on the road?
Kalel: Well, it’s both because there are a lot of people who know where we came from and say yeah Pillar’s a Christian band and there are a lot of people who have never heard of us before so to them we’re just a band. We don’t really care so much about the label. I don’t feel there’s a need to put “Christian” on things. You don’t have Christian Teachers and Christian Plumbers, but if people want to do the label thing it’s not like we’re going to get offended. We are Christians. We’re going to be real about it and not try to hide from that fact definitely. I think people respect people being real regardless of what they believe. We’re still active in the Christian music scene and we’re also out there playing just as many clubs and on mainstream radio stations. We’ll play anywhere, anytime.
Rachel: So you’re looking to reach people, not to preach to people?
Kalel: Oh definitely. Of course what we believe is going to come through in some of our lyrics because that’s who we are as people. But yeah we’re not out there to shove our beliefs down people’s throats. If someone hears something they think is cool they can definitely talk to us about it, but we’re out there to play the best music we can.
Rachel: I hate labels too. Rarely do I see a need.
Kalel: Yeah there’s no need to put a label on it. Yeah, we’re Christians, but there are bands out there that are Buddhists and Wiccans and ya know you don’t say hey there’s Godsmack the Wicca band.
Rachel: Right.
Kalel: I mean when you think about it with Christians a lot of times there’s that label and a lot of people in the music world sometimes think of it in negative term like this band’s going to be wimpy. But if you come see us live we’ll rock the place down. We just challenge people to put the labels aside and listen to the music. If you like the music, cool.
Rachel: What do you think is the best thing about the music on this album? What do you think the highlight is?
Kalel: I think there is a nice diversity in it. A lot of the songs don’t sound alike which is really cool and that’s just because we’re always writing, we don’t sit down for a month and just write an album. We wrote the album through like a year and a half period. We had different feelings and emotions throughout that time so a lot of the songs don’t sound alike. I think Rob took his vocals to a whole new level on this album. Especially like on the songs “Let it Out” or “Simply” ya know he just did some amazing things with his voice; creative. It’s a good album.
Rachel: Well speaking of that then have you been working on a new disc? Anything new in 2005?
Kalel: Well this album’s still pretty new, the second radio single is just coming out, “Hypnotized,” and normally there’s three or four singles on an album. So we’re not looking too far into another album right now, but we have started writing already. We travel with a recording machine and whenever we have ideas before sound check we plug it up and record em so we have about eight or nine ideas already on tape. It’ll be awhile before we take them seriously and actually go and finish them up though. I don’t see us recording until later 2005, but who knows.
Rachel: You’ve gone up through some line-up changes over the years. How do you feel about the current line-up and how has it maintained or altered the intent of the band?
Kalel: It’s definitely the strongest line-up by far that we’ve ever had. Noah’s been with us for about five years now, Lester over two. Every time we had a member switch it brought the ability of our band up to a whole new level. You can hear it on the albums. If you listen to Fireproof and then this new album you’ll hear a drastic change. Ya know and the only change in line-up was the drummer and Lester is such a good drummer he had a huge impact on our writing. And as performers they stepped up our live show too. They’re some of the best live performers I’ve ever seen and they’re in my band.
Rachel: What can we expect from Pillar live?
Kalel: You haven’t seen us yet?
Rachel: No. The Iowa show was cancelled and I missed you and Project 86 in Nebraska!
Kalel: I know that after the shows I see a lot of the fans and they’re sweatier than us sometimes. A lot of their voices are gone, so that’s probably a good indication. You’re going to get hot and sweaty and lose your voice. We’re definitely not a band that just stands there and plays and kinda rocks by moving around a little bit. We go all out when we play.
Rachel: How’s this tour going?
Kalel: It’s going great. Yeah, there’s been some smaller shows, but for the most part it’s been great. We’ve had a lot of sellouts and not too long ago we were up in Minneapolis and actually Trust Company and Papa Roach came over and watched our set. It was pretty cool. They played the same night as us right across the street. I think our crowd was about twice as big and they came over to watch our set and hung out for awhile. It’s been a good tour; we’ve had a good number of sellouts.
Rachel: What did they say about the show?
Kalel: Oh yeah, I guess the singer of Papa Roach had bought our album already. Yeah, so it was cool ya know. I’m hoping that someday we can do some shows with those guys. We’ll see though.
Rachel: You recorded a song with Dave Mustaine of Megadeth. What became of that song and might it turn up?
Kalel: Well we never really got it finished yet. We were scheduled to just kind of hang out and jam with Dave for a day. That got set up and he’s a great guy. We jammed for awhile and we kind of just ran out of time. We only got to spend a day. We did try some stuff, we got some layout of a song, but we were right in the middle of finishing up this album and there were a lot of our songs that weren’t done yet. So it kind of just got put on the back burner. It never really got turned into a full song. I don’t know if it will or not. We probably won’t ever bring it out. I honestly don’t think it turned out as cool as a lot of our own songs that were just all Pillar. We weren’t really expecting a lot. We just wanted to hang out and jam.
Rachel: How about your U2 cover of “Sunday Bloody Sunday?” Will that be released at some point or where can it be found?
Kalel: It actually has been released, but it was on a very small scale. I’m kind of glad because we want to re-release it on our own. It’s on compilation CD of U2 covers that was put out last year sometime. It’s called Aritists United for Love and a portion of the money from all those sales went to help some AIDS programs over in Africa. That’s why we got involved and we really like U2 so it was a great situation and so we recorded “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” The album really wasn’t a huge seller; they didn’t push it that much. Most of our fans don’t even know that we have it recorded, but they have heard our version of the song. So I’m hoping we can either later on re-release it with this album like in the spring or throw it on our next album. I’m not sure though. We don’t really get to make those decisions. That’s what I would like to see happen or we’ll save it for our next album.
Rachel: Cool. Well, that’s all I’ve got. Anything else you want to talk about?
Kalel: I think we pretty much covered it. Check out our website http://www.pillarmusic.com. We definitely like to keep in touch with our fans. Check out our message board.
Rachel: All right well I hope to catch ya soon.
Kalel: Oh yeah. Thanks for your time.
Rachel: No problem, thank you very much.
Kalel: Appreciate it.