Interview with Aaron Lazar from The Giraffes

Ever since the mid ‘90s, Brooklyn hard rock act The Giraffes have been ripping music a new one with loud riffs, seismic drumming and sheer intensity. On March 19^th they’ll be taking over Firehouse 13 with Attleboro punk legends Neutral Nation, rockers Red Mantis and post-apocalyptic phenoms Blackletter. Ahead of what should be a purely wild time, I had a chat with frontman Aaron Lazar about his artsy background, having a defibrillator in his chest, the band’s new album Usury, which came out last fall, and what the next few months have in store.

Rob Duguay (Motif): Before you joined The Giraffes in 2000, what you doing music-wise? Have you always been a fan of loud music?

Aaron Lazar: When I joined the band they didn’t really have a singer… It was an instrumental surf metal sort of thing and they would take turns singing, stuff like that. I wasn’t in the band yet but at one time some label folks hit them up and said “Hey, you folks need a singer” and they were looking around. I was basically an art student getting a masters in fine art, video, performance, that sort of stuff. I was being as obnoxious as I could be for creativity’s sake. I did a little thing with a friend of mine from Texas at CBGB’s one night, they saw me and they were like, “That’s the guy.” They approached me and I figured, “Yeah, why not?” I was pretty done with art at that point and I was looking to get into a band so it worked out.

RD: It’s cool how you decided to shift your creative drive from art on canvas to art on the stage. In 2005 you had two heart attacks and a seizure, resulting in a defibrillator being put in your chest. Has the way you sing changed since the operation?

AL: No, not at all. If anything I feel like I have an extra man. Boredom is the only thing that changes my habits on stage. If something starts happening too regularly or too often it gets boring to me, so I’ll change it. I haven’t really had to change anything when it comes to vocal delivery. I just want to go crazy and have a good time so why would I not give myself that opportunity?

RD: Before you had the defibrillator put in, did you ever feel yourself getting winded?

AL: My heart attack issue is completely electrical. I’ve had cameras in and out of my heart, through every major artery and I don’t have high cholesterol, I don’t have any congestive issues. It’s just some weird, electrical problem and so far I’m the only person who has this particular set of symptoms. I can’t get life insurance for example and it made it hard to get health care for a while as well until the law changed. They don’t know exactly what causes it, my doctor told me to my face “Listen, I’m not saying that no one has ever had what you have but if they did they didn’t live long enough to see a doctor about it.” So I’m the only one.

RD: So would it have something to do with the nerves connected to your heart?

AL: It’s not even my larger nervous system, they don’t really know what causes it. I thought for a while that I could figure it out. I thought for a period of time it had to do with me trying to quit smoking with a nicotine patch because one of the last sensations I had before I had the first heart attack was an intense sickness from nicotine. The first time you smoke a cigarette you get that green and vaguely nauseous head rush – that was one of the sensations I felt when I was going down.

I just put on a nicotine patch for the first time that morning so I thought it might have been that, but it proved to not be the case. Then I thought it might have been some electrical interference from something. The good thing about my implant is that it records everything that happens to me so if anything goes weird, there’s interference or if anything weird happens, I get a record of it and I can go and check when it happened. There’s no pattern that has to do with it.

RD: You initially left The Giraffes in February 2011 after a show at The Mercury Lounge in New York City and then you rejoined the band back in 2014. What made you want to come back to The Giraffes and do you have a different feeling about being in the band nowadays then you did back in 2011?

AL: In 2011 we were going pretty hard and steadily touring since 2004. It also coincided with a time when no one was making money anymore off of record sales, that was the end of that. People hadn’t figured out how to do the streaming and charging online. There was really no money in it, we could have kept going but we had been doing it for so long. I was getting burned out, I was getting annoyed, I was getting pissed off, I wasn’t healthy and it seemed like I was going to be trapped in an endless loop forever so I finally was like, “Fuck it” and walked away.

Then after a few years I started missing the mayhem a little bit. I stayed friends with the guys and the guy who is managing the band now, Tim Kent, was the original bass player who quit right around the time that I joined to become a painter. He became a pretty successful painter and out of that he wanted to work with the band again. But he wanted to manage it, because he knows how to do things now, because he’s a mover and shaker. He’s the one who convinced me to come back and do a reunion show which went well. It was a lot of fun so we decided to take a stab at making a record and a label appeared out of the mist and gave us a three-record deal, so that’s what we have now. That’s what I’m focusing on. We’re trying to make these three records at least the capping achievement of what we’ve done so far.

RD: This past fall the first record of that deal, Usury, was released.

AL: Yeah. “Usury” is an old word. A long time ago if you lent any money at interest, that used to be considered a sin by the Christian Church and they called it usury. It basically means using people sinfully. Interest used to be no bueno and our entire society is based on interest.

RD: That’s kind of ironic when you think about it. What was it like going back into the studio for the album?

AL: It was fine. I’ve made music and we’ve all continued to make music. When I wasn’t in the band, they continued to make music and I continued to make music with other people through other avenues. If anything changed it probably was that we got better and more efficient at making a record in the studio. That had gotten a bit easier: Songwriting is a little difficult sometimes. There’s four guys who all have strong opinions that don’t always line up. But at the end of the day, it comes together.

RD: It’s March, so summer is going to be here before we know it. What do The Giraffes have planned for when the weather gets warmer?

AL: I think the general plan is to play a few festivals around the country that we have coming up. We’re going to be finishing the next record around the same time. So from spring into summer there’s going to be a lot of studio days with tracking, overdubbing, mixing and all that sort of stuff. We’ll basically be riding out Usury and prepping for the next record.

RSVP to The Giraffes @ Firehouse 13 on March 19^th: https://www.facebook.com/events/972618036141461

The Giraffes’ Website