Thousand Foot Krutch Interview

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ethan butterfield | contributor

Thousand Foot Krutch

Photo Credit: officcialtfk on Instagram

Banding with Butterfield.

Hey everyone! So, over the course of the summer break, I had the amazing opportunity to talk with the lead singer of Thousand Foot Krutch, Trevor McNevan, about the band’s new album, Exhale. For those who aren’t familiar, Thousand Foot Krutch is Canadian hard rock band that originated out of Peterborough, Ontario. This is just some of what he had to say.

Ethan: So, your new album Exhale was a sequel of sorts to your other album Inhale. What was the reasoning behind that? Why the two part album? 

Thousand Food Krutch: Uhh, man, you know, we’ve been around 20 years actually as crazy as that sounds, this year. We just feel we’ve made a bunch of records and about three years ago, I just had this idea and we started talking about ”man, what if we did Oxygen: Inhale and Exhale” and it just seemed like a fun kind of exciting challenge to us to do something different and kind of, you know, split things up a bit. Where there’s always been quieter and more aggressive moments to every one of our records and so we wanted to just kinda take it a different route and say, “Ok, let’s let Inhale dive deeper into the quieter moments of this band, and kind of be a fun challenge to just dive deeper into that and see what happens.” There’s still upbeat stuff on there that wasn’t, you know, wasn’t a ballad, but it was the lighter side for sure. And then Exhale was always intended to be just more of a drop the gloves, sort of, let’s run at the more aggressive side, with no rules or regulations. It’s been a lot of fun, man, to make both and it feels so good to have Exhale out. 

E: Speaking of changing up the style and the songs and everything, I noticed the song “Honest” was kind of a departure from the regular tone of the album. Why is that?
TFK: Well, a lot of our records in the past, other than 
Inhale, most of them had the last track on the record as kind of the quieter moment, you know, and the rest of it was a little more aggressive and so, I’m not sure, man. I’ve always been a fan of a dynamic record, a record that kinda takes you on a journey and just doesn’t feel one-dimensional. Something that really takes you somewhere and has a lot of different colours and shapes, and so it felt really right to have this quieter really intimate moment at the very end of this very loud record to kind of put a period at the end of the sentence. I actually worked on about five or six different songs to kind of contend for that last song, because it was a really important moment to me for the record, and I love the songs, each of them. It’s just this one just felt right. You kinda just know when you know. You gotta follow that inspiration, and “Honest” is a special song to me. It’s about life’s questions and being vulnerable enough and strong enough to be able to say, “I need some help and I don’t have this figured out.” 

E: Another song that I noticed you guys did was a cover of “Where the River Flows” by Collective Soul. This is kind of a two-part question. First, do you guys do other covers live? Second, what was the reasoning behind that? 

TFK: Ah man, to answer both your questions, we do do a few other covers live. I think it’s fun to just kinda tip your hat to bands that really…that you love and musically inspire you and, we’re currently doing “Outshined” by Soundgarden live, and then we’ve also been doing live acoustic at radio shows when we go play our singles. So yes, we do play covers from time to time, but not all the time.

“Where the River Flows” though, who didn’t grow up with Collective Soul in some way, shape or form in the ‘90s? They’re just a great band with great songs and I always loved them and they were always positive. That particular song, I think it was the first song I remember hearing someone play a baritone guitar off of. It had this crunch to it, just the way the drum hit, was such a heavy groove based song and I’ve always just loved it.

We actually got asked to do live acoustic at Sirius XM Octane on the Inhale record and we didn’t have one prepared and so at the time I was like, “Man, what song would be great to cover acoustically?” And that one was just on the forefront of my mind and we had a lot of fun with it.

E: You mentioned earlier that you’ve been doing this for two decades. Is there anything you look back on that you might have done differently as far as songs or albums? 

TFK: Oh man, as a songwriter and as a vocalist, you’re constantly pushing yourself to improve each time, you know. So when I look back, especially prior to Welcome to the Masquerade record, the records before that. Really of proud of and love the songs, love what happened. They’re all big markings in a moment in time for us. And I’m not ashamed of any of it. I love it. But as a songwriter, I look back and there’s a lot of little things I’d do differently, and as a vocalist, I felt like it took me until that record, really. I think Welcome to the Masquerade was the first record I remember being able to actually sing what I heard in my head and pull it off the way I want to, so it’s taken some time man.  

E: If you can say, is there anything coming up for the future? 

TFK: Yeah man, it’s going to be great; we’re setting out on the Exhale tour. Our tour that we’re bringing Adelitas Way out on, 3 Pill Morning, Smashing Satellites and then we’re heading out with our good buddies from Skillet. They have a new record coming out as well.  Then we’re already talking about tours for after that, man, so we’ll see where things drop there, but there will be some new music videos coming, too, as well, and July 12 is the first ad date for our second single off this album. It’ll be a song called “Push.”

E: That’s awesome! Well, thank you for everything and all the best for your future.
TFK: Thanks Ethan, hope to see you at a show soon! 

So, there you have it. Thousand Foot Krutch is going strong and shows no signs of stopping. Their new album Exhale is available now! 

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