Local Band Cannibal Kids speaks on The Pipeline

By Nathalie Bojoquez/Contributing Writer

Cannibal Kids, the South Florida indie band with a beachy twist, graced WRGP’s one and only local radio show, The Pipeline, with an exclusive interview.

Diana Moon and Natalie Bojorquez, Hosts of The Pipeline, spoke to the boys, who disclosed the reason behind their recent quietness, the meaning of their lyrics and the entire song writing process.

They also announce a new EP in the works, “Cake Daze,” that will finally satisfy their starving fans until the band drops their first album.

Diana Moon: This is the Pipeline, locals only, and today we have with us… Cannibal Kids.

Cannibal Kids: Hi I’m Damian Gutierrez, I’m the vocalist of the band. I’m Jordon Hernandez, I’m the bassist. I’m Dustin, I’m the lead guitarist. And I’m Luke I’m the drummer.

Diana: Alright and that’s for the people that don’t know you.

Natalie Bojorquez: So you can associate the voice with the name.

Diana: Because you know you can’t see anyone….

Damien: In case anyone didn’t know, we usually dress like Mormons.

Natalie: Today they’re dressed in very bright colors, very Miami. Luke is wearing a very stylish teal top with rocking’ grey shoes.

Luke: This is definitely not my work shirt.

Natalie: I’m painting a word picture for the audience. They’re also very snug on our couch.

Damien: Too tight! Dustin’s fingers are way too close to my ear. Gross!

Diana: Do you guys want to talk about the origins of the band before we get into the music?

Natalie: What makes you cannibals?

Damien: Cannibal Kids is a project that the four of us started about two years ago. Luke, Dustin, and I were already previous friends and we had worked in another band and we were doing things with that one, then it came to an end. When we decided to rebrand and rethink our formula Cannibal kids came to be and it was like the man in the sky gave us this boy right here and we got Jordon. Everything worked so fine; we got together; we wrote a couple songs and next thing you know we’re here.  

Luke: Cannibal kids and No Compromise, really had more of an overlap.

Damien: The idea for our sound started when we were in No Compromise. We found it there.

Natalie: You guys flow with whatever is going on because you guys have a really cool Indie Rock sound, but then you did Sylvan Esso remix and it blew my mind because I didn’t know you had that reach. It was a great remix by the way.

Damien: That was actually a project that Dustin was working on. The indie surf-poppy sound that we have is only one element of what I think we’re capable of. It’s fair to say that we’re good musician but we’re all music lovers first. So when it comes to music in general, music news, and what’s out there and being created, we’re always out on the lookout for what’s new and what’s happening. We’re music fans before we’re anything else, which creates all the music that we make.

Diana: I can tell because every time I listen to your music, it sounds so clean and very professional. It’s well balanced.

Natalie: You can also tell that a lot of different artists inspire your sound. I don’t want to block you into a genre just because you take so much influence for other artists.

Damien: Every song has a story of its creation, which we really appreciate because they’re so many little elements to all of our songs and they all matter. The composition that we write, we write with a purpose. It’s an interesting process definitely drawing inspiration from other artists and we look at it and say “we can put our ideas to that as well.”

Natalie: How did the name Cannibal Kids come into being?

Damien: Oh… Does someone want to say the story… Basically the name Cannibal Kids is more like a title for a very cool story. It refers to a person who was in a place where we shouldn’t have been. We might have done some things that we’re not proud of. We stumble across some pretty scary stuff and thus the name was born.

Luke: If we told the whole story, you’d think it was out of a really bad horror movie, one day we’ll tell it.

Natalie: Do you guys want to talk about the inspiration for “Where are the People?”

Damien: We wrote that song two summers ago and the whole idea was that we really wanted an energy filled song. We knew that we had the capability for it but we said “we’re going to actually do it now.” We recorded that song in the studio two summers ago and it was really an organic process.  I remember it being that we had the drums down and then came the guitar chords and the last thing was the melody and that’s how we built that song. We wrote that song within a few hours, we really got it all molded out after playing it a couple times at shows.

Natalie: You were saying earlier that each song is a story by itself? What’s the case with ‘Where are the People?’

Damien: I wrote the lyrics for that one and the whole idea for the song was that I wanted it to be kind of an existential song, begging these bigger questions, and asking in a more social sense “where are the people, where are their heads, what are they thinking?” Thinking more about what’s going on with them.

There are a lot of royal allusions that I like to throw in there, so I’ll say things like “your veins are made of gold.” We can go line by line.

Diana: I haven’t heard any other bands say they can go line by line. Most just say, ‘It’s about this’ and leave it at that.

Damien: that’s pretty much how I like to write the songs, line by line. I really could delve into each one and tell you where that line came from and why.

Natalie: Is each song solely written by you? Or is it more of a collaborative effort?

Damien: The instrumentality and the overall composition of the song is usually all four of us. We like to have everybody there because all of us work really well with our ideas; Luke will play something, then Jordon will play something and we just all feed of each other. We know what we want, it’s usually there. The process is happening and we’re just going along.

Luke: All our songs are normally written when we’re just having a normal rehearsal. We’ll go through our songs and someone will start playing something and we all join in. The song just kind of happens.

Natalie: For “Where are the People?” did the chorus come first? Because that is a really strong chorus.

Damien: I figured out that vocal melody and that’s what took off.

Diana: What has happened since I last saw you guys?

Damien: We have been a little quiet but for good reason. We have been working behind the scenes on a bigger project and we are happy to sit here and say that just a few days ago we finalized the paperwork and Cannibal Kids is now a signed band to a label, World Records. We are their brand new project. We are the second artist they’ve had, it’s really personal. The team that we’ve assembled is really hands on, we really trust. We’re all in good hands, it’s been quite the journey.

Luke: We had to keep it quiet.

Damien: We did want to say something or promise something and not pull through. Even towards the end, these were some large decisions we had to make for the next few years. Now we’re big picture, it’s no longer “do we wanna play a show this weekend?” We are very fortunate for this opportunity. We have come on the scene relatively new, still getting our feet in the water and to have this opportunity is so massive for us. We came in wanting to do this for fun but then when we started to see our progress we said “why not?”

Diana: It’s certainly helped that you guys have such a great fan base.

Damien: Our fans are crazy, they’re awesome! We have some really dedicated fans and we don’t even have any words to thank them. We’re speechless. Sometimes we’re so surprised, we’ve had fans make us blankets. We’ve had fans from Brazil ask us to translate the lyrics into Portuguese.

’My Boy/My Girl’ is definitely a fan favorite.

Jordon: we always ask the crowd to sing along on that song.

Luke: It’s also one of our different songs.

Natalie: It shows how diverse you can be.

Diana: How dynamic.

Damien: We wrote “My Boy/My Girl” and “Graphing” at the same time, literally in the same session. They’re kind of like part 1 part 2 of a bigger story.

Luke: Whenever we play them live, we always play them one after the other.

Damien: I think the energy that we do it live, we end really big with that song. That’s another song you can take verse by verse and it paints a different image with each line. We really love that song, it’s a really fun one to play.

Natalie: What can we expect from you guys now that you’re done being quiet?

Luke: Hopefully more music actually out.

Damien: we want the releases to count. We want the music that’s dropped to be found organically and so we’re really working for digital placement and physical placement. Right now we are going to be working on our sound. We’re gonna be working on our performances. The music is coming!

Diana: The new EP?

Damien: the new EP Cake Daze. We wrote these song and put them together because these songs for us really reflected the time that we wrote them. It was all about having a good time. Each one of those songs is about a great feeling, so we summed it up and it’s called Cake Daze. These songs are really special to us, they meant the most as a whole project. The new stuff is coming.

For those of you that may be interested in seeing this amazing band live, they will be at Churchill’s Pub on Jan. 16 and at The Granary on Feb. 6.

 

Nathalie is Local Genre Director at WRGP, listen to her live show The Pipeline every Wednesday from 4-6 pm. For Suggestions email entertainment@fiusm.com @pipelinewrgp #localvibesonly

 

 

 

Photo Courtesy of Cannibal Kids