Thirty years ago, after several years rising through the post-hardcore underground, Kansas City, Missouri’s Season to Risk unleashed their second album A Perfect World on Columbia Records.
Carrying forward the momentum and inspiration from sharing a stage with iconic bands like Jesus Lizard, Prong and Killing Joke, the group found themselves working with legendary producer Martin Bisi (Sonic Youth, Swans, John Zorn and countless others).
Long out of print, the album now gets a 30-year-anniversary reissue (remastered by the band’s own Duane Trower), the new version sounding as powerful and vital as ever.
With A Perfect World set for a new vinyl release Spartan Records on Record Store Day (November 28) and the band getting ready to hit the road around North America in support of the release, New Noise caught up with founding members Steve Tulipana and Duane Trower and longstanding drummer David Silver to discuss the band’s early years, the making of A Perfect World and their forthcoming shows.
What was the atmosphere like in Kansas City for the kind of music you wanted to make and for places to play and see other bands in the early years of the band?
Steve Tulipana (vocalist): We were wild men making wild music. It was a very supportive scene. We threw warehouse parties and hosted new band nights at venues with a PA that we brought in. Always trying to make stuff happen and always sharing information and opportunities with each other.
Duane Trower (guitar/synth): It was great, a lot of the bands were friends and we all seemed to feed off of each others energy and creativity
David Silver (drums): I am so grateful to have lived in Kansas City in the ’90s, where in the average week I could go see Shiner in some tiny bar Tuesday night, Giants Chair on Wednesday, Molly McGuire, Quitters Club, Dirtnap … so many great bands and great venues. There were also multiple record stores with live shows. Or DIY punk spaces, like you could see Neurosis melt faces in a tiny coffeeshop. Big city shows with a small-town vibe (and cost).
What do you remember about your first tour?
Steve: We ventured to Chicago, St. Louis and other regional places early on but the first real tour was with Prong. We had been added to a few Midwest dates but the direct support, Big Chief, decided that they weren’t liking how the tour was going and decided to fall off. We begged on to the rest of what we could do and we ended up out in the Pacific Northwest. The first time we’d ever been out that way. Checking in with a roommate back home at the band house at one point and we got notified that we were being evicted so we had to race back home to get our stuff out of the house. If I remember correctly the van just barely made it to our block and gave up the ghost. Pretty sure we just left it there!
Duane: I can’t remember if it was with Voodoo gearshift or Prong. Steve? … Or our first weekend in Chicago playing with Table at Dreamerz, with Wesley Willis watching while sketching the el train through the back window and yelling “Hale- fucken- lujah” as loud as he could after our songs! I remember we hardly had any money and just said, “What the hell, let’s go for it,” and we made it happen. On the Prong short run they asked us to continue on with them without a guarantee and they got us paid a little, and were super cool and let us stay in their motels after they showered and left in their tour bus for the next show. Small gestures like that made it possible.
Signing to a major label can obviously do a lot for a band’s exposure and have other potential benefits, but with it there can be a lot of added pressures. Looking back, how do you see the impact of the band’s time on Columbia?
Duane: I don’t remember much pressure from Columbia, just too many cooks in the kitchen and releases took forever to get all of the departments to work together in a timely manner. We always toured a lot and it was nice to have a little bit of money to at least pay our rent back home while we were on the road.
Steve: I agree with Duane; I never felt too pressured. We just didn’t do things we didn’t want to do. We always marched to our beat. Its amazing that they put two records out for us. I’m grateful with out that opportunity so many things would not have come our way. From performing in a major motion picture to constant touring and getting to live in NYC for a summer. So many wild adventures.
David: During the year we toured to release and promote Perfect World, there were frequently-changing new art directors and marketing people, and each was more confused about what to do with the band than the last. But having the support to just play music every night with a team of people trying to promote you was beyond our teenaged hardcore punk dreams.
After releasing your self-titled debut, what was the mindset going into recording the follow up—whether you wanted to build on elements or change the approach in any way?
Steve: It was to challenge. To be as creative as possible and push physical limits.
Duane: We definitely wanted the follow up to be more raw and visceral. I really thought we would get pressure from Columbia to make a pop record, but they were totally out of the way creatively.
What impact did working with Martin Bisi have on the band and the record In A Perfect World and what insights did you take from him?
Steve: Martin taught us so much technically but also to consider the song, the music, and the rhythm. He was a master tape splicer too, so we were able to stretch some things out and rearrange the old-school way. He had so so many cool stories about other projects he’d done or how he and other artists worked that helped inform new ways of doing things.
Duane: Martin was great. He knew how to go with the flow and help us get what we wanted. It felt easy to trust his opinion knowing all of the great bands he had done there. Sonic Youth, Swans, John Zorn …
David: My audition was in Bisi’s studio, and at the time half my record collection came out of there. I was honored to be in the room that produced SWANS, Cop Shoot Cop, Foetus, and Herbie Hancock!
Thinking particularly about Bisi’s recording studio, to what extent did that environment inspire your performances on the record and did that experience have any significant influence on how you built your own recording studio?
Steve: I’ll let Duane take this one. I just tried to not mind the ghosts too much.
Duane: His cacophonic warehouse live room added to the chaos for sure! We were fortunate to have been in quite a few studios and I’ve tried to soak up as much of the positives and not so positives from previous studios to use in building my studio—Weights and Measures Soundlab. I’ve focused on having good analog gear, and the acoustics of the rooms. I try to get enough ambience and air ( Bisi’s, Soundwerks …) and have it be diffused and dampened enough to control and focus the sound as well ( The Blasting Room, Sony studios …)
I really enjoyed the movie Strange Days back in the day (it’s a long time since I saw it). How did the band come to be a part of the movie and what was that experience like?
Duane: I think we had a friend that was making copies of our dailies at Columbia and overheard someone looking for an end of the world sounding band for the movie. They mentioned us. They wanted to use the song Remembered, but were asking for it to be exclusive and not be on the album. We said we would write a new song for them. The guys were wondering what ideas we could start from. When we played in Chicago at the Metro we’d always get excited to go to a Mexican restaurant down the street called Compeche after the show. We would all pound a Latin rhythm on the van when en route. I suggested we borrow our compeche beat for the movie song. The experience was wild. We had just finished most of the tracking for In A Perfect World, then wrote and recorded Undone for it, and it was fun to just hang out for most of the two weeks we were on set as extras mingling in the warehouse performance scene. We met some interesting characters, as well as the main cast.
David: We’re getting close to everyone having creepy neuralink brain downloads.
Steve: Duane has it right. A woman our drummer was dating worked at Columbia’s Santa Monica studios that Juliette Lewis was recording those PJ Harvey songs at. She was chatting with the music producer on the film and suggested us to him. She had access to the rough mix dupes and gave him one. We were getting ready to take a month off and go back to KC so Duane could rest his wrist. He struggled from tendonitis at the time. But then the offer came over. We had to fly the drummer back out and we spent the fourth of July recording and mixing the song. They didn’t even hear it until we showed up on set two days later. It was super fun and exciting. Our tour manager got to join us out in LA and he actually is in the film almost more than we are as an extra walking about in the background of scenes. It’s always fun to revisit and play the count the Greezys.
Season To Risk shared the stage with some iconic bands in the 90s—and some of my personal heroes, like Killing Joke. Could you pick out any performances you witnessed from those times that especially stand out and inspired you?
Steve: So so many. Ones that I wish I could go back—Killing Joke for sure, Jesus Lizard every time. Die Kreuzen was an early one. Watching No Means No is always like going to school. Killdozer!!! Oh man. The list goes on, but the life-long friends from 7 Year Bitch, Babes in Toyland, Unsane. Those are important.
Duane: Killing Joke was a great one. Martin Atkins broke two kick drum heads that show! Table were really cool to see. Morsel from Ohio was interesting; the Bark Market tour we did was a blast. They were great. So many bands that we got to be friends with.
David: First, RIP Geordie (and Raven). I love Killing Joke so much, one of the few bands that just got better their entire career. And even near the end they were a crushing live band, barely taking a second between songs for 90 minute show.
The newly remastered version of In A Perfect World sounds tremendous. Having been out of print for so many years, why did now become the right time to revisit the album, and after all this time, how does it feel being so immersed in the record again?
Steve: Well a few years ago, I decided we needed to get the two records from the CD area released on vinyl and it just became a blossoming project to release them all going backwards. Doing The Shattering and Men are Monkeys ourselves was a pretty big undertaking, and I was excited to have a label help with these early records. John from Spartan has been re-issuing records from all of our KC buds, Shiner, Giant’s Chair, and Boys Life, so we figured it was a good fit. Steve Williams of init records jumped in the picture after we dig the cassette release of 1-800-Meltdown which we just did to have something to sell on a tour we did around the No Coast Fest. He said he’d like to put it out on vinyl and to sweeten the deal we gave him our first new recording in years to add to the vinyl version. I’m super proud of that. Sorry, I got away from In A Perfect World. I love that this version is made for the fans. The vinyl version Sony made was kind of slapdash and not pressed properly, in my opinion. This Spartan release really represents the true vision of that album.
Duane: Thanks! It was interesting deep diving into it and having all of the memories of writing, recording, and touring around that time. Our pal John at Spartan has been putting out lots of great bands albums, and we were happy he approached us about it.
David: Thirty-year remasters for post-hardcore bands is just the thing happening lately! I love this whole record, which has Jason Gerken drumming. I joined the band a couple months later.
The album’s original Derek Hess artwork makes a great companion to the album’s music. In terms of the visual presentation, what can people buying physical copies of the remaster look forward to?
David: It is the best version of Derek’s original artwork in my opinion. Very clear, minimal text. A dark working class vision of our bleak dystopian future.
And in terms of the band’s forthcoming shows in November and December, what can you reveal about your plans for the setlist?
Duane: We usually try to play a handful of songs from each album, and some new ones.
David: We like to keep some surprises, but we’re playing songs from every album, including some new music. Thanks for great questions.
Steve: I’m hoping for a couple of surprises and some songs of In A Perfect World that have not been played in well over 25 years.
Go to Spartan Records for more information on the 1,500 limited edition vinyl release of In A Perfect World.
Photo courtesy of Season To Risk
