On their upcoming live @ Gagarin 205, on the 25th March, Brian Cook of BOTCH gave Innersound-Radio an interview.

1. What started you on your renewed path? What inspired the conversation regarding the r-word?

The prospect of a reunion was something that's come up a lot over the last 20 years. There were a few festival offers every year, and for me personally as someone that was still out on the touring circuit, there were always promoters asking if it was something that we'd ever consider. During that time, there was a bit of a split in the band in terms of interest in reuniting, with that divide basically being between people who were still in active bands on one side and folks that weren't touring and making new records on the other. But then Dave K.'s band Minus the Bear split up and he spent the pandemic working on a solo record. He recruited Dave V. to sing on one of his songs. Then he recruited me to play bass on it. Then we figured... why not bring Tim on board and make it a Botch song? There wasn't much in the way of aspirations beyond that. We were reissuing our albums on Sargent House after our old label Hydra Head closed shop, so it seemed like a nice perk to give people this new song "One Twenty Two" to go with the reissues. Once that came out the reunion offers REALLY started pouring in, and it reignited the conversation. Now it was three guys who weren't actively touring and that slid the pro-reunion camp into a majority vote. And who am I to stand in the way of a democracy?

2. Punk and hardcore, Undertow and Dead Kennedys, Metallica and Sepultura, a jazz band drummer, one of the most recognizable voices in the genre! You were polar opposites, who are you actually?

I think we were four kids living in the suburbs of a city that was experiencing the international attention of grunge. But even though bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains were essentially local bands, they felt like distant rock stars to us. Seattle had a very prohibitive law against all ages shows at the time, so if you were underage and wanted to experience these kinds of shows that Charles Peterson was famously documenting, you had to go to secret shows in basements, rental halls, and youth centers. There was so much amazing music happening in those spaces at the time. The world may have been fixated on grunge, but we were seeing local bands like Undertow, Unwound, Karp, Seaweed, Death Wish Kids, Behead the Prophet, Sunny Day Real Estate... so much incredible stuff. We had different musical tastes, but seeing those kinds of bands at a pivotal age meant that we had this really formative shared experience, and that became the basis for our band.

3. Have you outgrown elements in your music? 

I can't say that our entire catalog resonates with me. We started in '93 and I don't think we wrote any songs I'm proud of until '95, and even then, I'd say we weren't consistent in quality until '97 or so. We've been focused on the material from our albums and final EP for these shows, and that material is still important to me. I wouldn't necessarily write bass lines like the stuff on American Nervoso at age 46, but as a whole I don't think my work in SUMAC is that much of a stretch from what Botch was doing back then.

BOTCH @ Innersound-Radio

FM100,6 "Το Τελλόγλειο εκπέμπει..." Συνέντευξη με τη Μαρίνα Βουλογιάννη και το Νίκο Ζαφρανά,  την Παρασκευή 3 Μαρτίου 2016με θέμα τη συναυλία  "Έλα σαν την άνοιξη" που θα δοθεί στις 11 Μαρτίου 2016 στο Τελλόγλειο Ίδρυμα Τεχνών του ΑΠΘ στις 20:15.
Τρεις διεθνώς καταξιωμένοι καλλιτέχνες της Θεσσαλονίκης, η Μαρίνα Βουλογιάννη, ο Νικόλας Σπανός και ο Νίκος Ζαφρανάς ενώνουν για μια ακόμη φορά τις δυνάμεις τους επιβιβαζόμενοι σε ένα ταξίδι σε μια ιδιαίτερα παραγωγική καλλιτεχνικά περίοδο του ελληνικού αλλά και του διεθνούς ρεπερτορίου, μια εποχή που μας άφησε μικρά μουσικά αριστουργήματα. Η περίοδος του Μεσοπολέμου, ως μια ανάπαυλα ανάμεσα σε δυο τερατώδεις παγκόσμιες αιματηρές συρράξεις, μοιάζει να προσπαθεί με την ανυπέρβλητη μουσική της ομορφιά να γιατρέψει πληγές και να γράψει ιστορία σε μια κοινωνία βαθειά καταπονημένη. Η φτώχεια, η εγκατάλειψη, η μοναξιά, ίσως ποτέ δεν εκφράστηκαν με γλυκύτερο και ηθικότερο τρόπο. 

Η συναυλία αναδεικνύει μιαν ανθολογία τόσο της ελληνικής μουσικής παραγωγής γύρω στη δεκαετία του ’30 όσο και της διεθνούς μουσικής σκηνής που την επηρέασε. 

Ονόματα όπως ο Γιαννίδης, ο Σουγιούλ, ο Αττίκ, αλλά και οι Kurt Weill, Astor Piazzolla και Jacinto Guerrero ζωντανεύουν ξανά μέσα από τις φωνές και τα πλήκτρα. 

Ophelia Galani