Chances are, if you've been paying attention to the Philly music scene in the past two decades, you've seen one or two members of Crossed Keys before, although you’ve probably seen them all. The members have a long history of playing in punk bands from the area like Kid Dynamite, Ink & Dagger, Step Ahead, Kill The Man Who Questions, Zolof the Rock & Roll Destroyer, Halo of Snakes, & The Curse. We caught up with the band to talk about their newest record ‘Believe In You’:
How did the band form and what does the band name mean?
Our band origin story isn’t all that compelling, I don’t think. We’ve all been friends and bandmates in other bands for years, so it was only a matter of time before we collectively ended up in the same room with our hands full of instruments, looking at each other.
The band name comes from the movie “The Grand Budapest Hotel” by Wes Anderson. The Society of the Crossed Keys was the secret society of concierges that worked in each of the hotels, coming together in this movie to help M. Gustave and Zero the lobby boy evade their captors. I’m a huge movie nerd and I adore Wes Anderson, but also this concept of a society of helpers really resonated with me & I think it perfectly suits the personalities of everyone in this band. I can honestly say, without reservation, that the people who make up Crossed Keys are the best people I know.
Previous musical projects? How'd you first get into music?
I was in a lot of musically disparate bands in my time. I was a late bloomer; I didn’t start playing in bands until after college while most of my contemporaries were playing in bands while in school. My first two bands started at the same time, circa 2002. One was called Hey Angel and featured Dave Adoff (who is in Crossed Keys as well) and Brendan Hill, who you may know from such bands as Step Ahead and The Curse. The other band was a Lord Of The Rings inspired post-rock band called Belegost. The band featured ex-members of bands like Crucial Unit, Virginia Black Lung, etc. I played bass in both of these bands, but I also sang for Hey Angel.
After that, I sang for a hardcore band called Halo Of Snakes that featured ex-members of Autumn, Hot Cross and The Boils. The drummer from that band, Wardog, still plays with me in a hardcore band today called Hard Turf. I then played guitar in a few bands, Only Glory (also with Wardog) and Kochiyama. I also played bass in a band called Solarized around this time. Then I played in an indie rock duo called Aspect Ratio, a concept band dedicated to movies. Then Crossed Keys started and it’s been my main musical focus ever since. But you can’t keep a mediocre bass player down, so I also play bass in Hard Turf, a hardcore band featuring ex-members of Brothers Keeper and Right Start. All of this and I play solo also, just as Josh Alvarez. There were a few more bands here & there along the way, but this is most of them.
First concert that you ever went to?
The first concert I ever saw was Lyle Lovett and Sophie B Hawkins when I was in 7th grade and visiting my Grandma in California. She had some kind of hook up and I ended up at the show. At the time, I was nurturing a new found obsession with Morrissey and had a t-shirt with the record cover of Viva Hate on it and my Grandma, seeing the t-shirt, got me a ticket to see Lyle Lovett because he had the same hairstyle as Mozzer did on the shirt on his tour poster. I remember it being a weird and wonderful experience in all of the best ways and it’s only one of a million reasons why I’ll be a Grandma’s boy for the rest of my life.
What's your writing process like?
Sometimes, songs come out of the ground like a potato. Other times, you gotta do stuff to them. Add and subtract things. Flavor it with dynamics, cigarettes, drag queens, failed romances, dragons, ghosts, checkered flags and black eyes. I write songs about friends, about growing old gracefully and about staying creative in a world where everything is commodified and monetized with art being the secondary pursuit. I take a lot of inspiration from the ephemera of my every day; from books by Haruki Murakami, from movies directed by Agnes Varda, from songs by The Mountain Goats. If you pay enough attention to the lyrics, you’ll likely realize that I basically have plagiarized all of the dialog from Rocky IV and turned all of Apollo Creed’s lines into catchy tunes about ennui and joy.
What other artists or songs inspire your music?
I’ve always been a fan of protest music ever since I was a child. I learned how to play guitar listening to folk singers like Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, but I also learned how to play fingerstyle guitar from listening to bands like Simon & Garfunkel or Nick Drake. Folk music always spoke to me in a way that pop music generally couldn’t; telling me tales about real things that working class people had to contend with just to survive. I also was enamored with the music of the Madchester scene of the 80s & 90s. I was in love with bands like The Lightning Seeds or The Mighty Lemon Drops. Something about the debonair nature and style of the music really resonated with me. Given my penchant and attention to both style and agency, it was an easy transition then from folk & britpop to hardcore punk and hip hop. I went to college in Central Jersey during the mid-90s and, for a time, I was of the opinion that New Jersey was truly the center of the world when it came to subversive music. Seeing hip hop bands like Gang Starr and hardcore bands like Vision from week to week gave me a cultural upbringing that couldn’t happen in any other place at any other time and I will be forever grateful to both the Empire State and the Garden State for it.
Believe it or not, all of these influences have found their place in the Crossed Keys verbiage. It’s all there, if you look for it.
What's the live experience like and your philosophy on playing live? Do you think the music live should be identical to the recorded version or should it be its own thing?
The Crossed Keys live experience is, simply put, a celebration. This band has the distinction of being the only band that I’ve ever played in where I’ve had stage specific costuming for literally every show we’ve ever played. My dear friend and collaborator, Grace Ryung Kim, has made me a shirt for every time we’ve ever touched a stage. They’re all beautiful garments; floral shirts made with love and care.
I like to think that our live shows are high energy and aggressive while still being welcoming and fun. For me, the live experience is a beast of its own design; studio recording is fun because you have supreme control over every aspect of the music you’re creating, but live, there are so many radicals that you just never know what the outcome could be. I’ve personally had every experience one could have within the context of performing music on a stage at this level. I’ve played shows that were only attended by the people in the other bands playing. I’ve played sold out shows in punk squats and the basements of churches. I’ve even played shows where the only instruction given by promoters was “try not to stand in that puddle or hit your head on the floorboards.” Through it all, I’ve never lost sight of the fact that it’s a gift to be able to perform, to sing things that maybe someone somewhere could get some insight from. This might not always be what you’d find on the record, but I can assure you, the most honest anyone can be is when they’re on stage singing or playing their hearts out. That’s what we’re here for in the end, isn’t it? The honesty?
Has the band toured? What has the touring experience been, best shows?worst shows?
We’re a bunch of well preserved punk rock elders. As such, we have elder responsibilities such as children or adult jobs, the end result being that we haven’t “toured” in any extended capacity. We’ve managed to play out of town shows here & there and we’re planning on playing more far off places on this new record. The majority of the members of Crossed Keys have had the good fortune of touring extensively with past projects and are chomping at the bit to get out there again.
So far, the experience of playing shows away from home has been fun since we’ve managed to play them with our friends in other bands in their home cities.
The worst shows that we’ve ever played were mostly the early ones, which I guess isn’t a rare experience. We were still trying to define ourselves and our sound; it’s difficult to be a band that has the pedigree of hardcore bands but doesn’t play traditional hardcore music. You can’t easily see who your music is for or how it’s going to be received. You find yourself simply holding your nose & jumping right in. It’s fun, but it’s also nerve-wracking to a certain degree. When you’re out there, singing your lungs out and the response is just grumpy people standing in the back with their arms folded, you tend to ask yourself “am I just an idiot in a floral shirt wasting everybody’s time up here?”. If punk has taught me anything, however, it’s that the catharsis comes at the end of the set, not before. Consequently, the best Crossed Keys shows have been the ones where we’ve finally found our voice and just let it all go for broke, typically to a room filled with all of our friends and loved ones. I still don’t think we’ve played our best show yet or even written our best material yet, which is why this band still feels fresh and new; we keep on reaching and searching for that next level.
We also played with Strike Anywhere once & that was incredible for me since I’m a huge fan.
What's up next for the band?
We want to play as many shows as we can in front of as many people as possible.
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