INTERVIEW: Elijah Witt – Cane Hill

From releasing their second album, a live album, extensive touring, and writing their upcoming EP, CANE HILL had a brilliant 2018. Carrying this momentum into 2019, the band look set for what could be their biggest year yet. We caught up with frontman Elijah Witt ahead of their Manchester show with BURY TOMORROW (read our review here) to see what the future holds for CANE HILL.

Album two Too Far Gone has been out for almost a year now, how has the response been?

Elijah: Really Good. It’s hard to think about what happened a year ago compared to now because it all just seems like ages ago honestly. As a band I think we’ve grown significantly and I think our fanbase has grown with us and they like the change of pace.

Second albums are notorious for being difficult , how was the process for you?

Elijah: The sophomore album slump? We didn’t really think about it to be honest. I know a lot of people who really stress out about how well their album is going to do and we just didn’t even think about it. I don’t think we realised what could have happened, but we were just like “this is good, people will love it!” and kind of just went with it.

You recently announced your upcoming EP Kill The Sun which will be out in January. You said that this would be a bit of a change of pace and explore a more mellow CANE HILL, can you tell us about your approach and why you felt like switching it up a bit?

Elijah: Well we put out two albums, we put out an EP. We’ve been angry, we’ve been heavy, and we know if we keep on doing that formula that there’ll be something very specific expected of us in the future and we just wanted to make sure that we could be like “you don’t know what you’re going to get from us any time we put out a record”. So just very early on be like “Get ready to be confused for the rest of our career”.

So does this represent a new direction for the band, or just a moment in time you wanted to capture?

Elijah: Nah, it’s definitely just a moment in time.

With you being so busy this year, how did you go about writing and recording (your upcoming EP) Kill The Sun – did you write a lot of it on the road? What was that process like?

Elijah: We had a few little breaks here and there. There was this three month break where we were supposed to be touring which ended up working a lot in our favour. The unfortunate truth is that Devin had cysts in his wrist, massive ones, and had to get them operated on and he couldn’t play drums for a while. So we kind of took that time as a higher power telling us “you guys should write” and we were like “thank fucking god, we are not ready to go into the studio”, so we did it all at home at James‘ computer.

With Kill The Sun being totally different from your previous work, what do you hope your fans take from the new EP?

Elijah: Just to vibe with this different side of us and the different feelings other than rage. We’ve always liked doing softer stuff, we’ve always liked being sad – well I guess I’ve always liked being sad, positivity ain’t my thing. So I just want people to resonate with it, enjoy it, embrace it for what it is, and be prepared for what comes next at all times.

Can we expect to see some of the Kill The Sun stuff creep its way into your setlists?

Elijah: I think it might be a minute before we do that just because we don’t want to put everything on a computer, we want to actually get the instruments. We did a lot of things that we’d never done before so we don’t have some of the equipment to do it live. We definitely made it in a studio with a bunch of fucking awesome shit around us, so we don’t want to put it through a computer. We want Devin to be playing drums and electric drums and saxophone, we want Ryan on some pads, and me and James both switching between acoustic and electric guitars while doing everything.

So when the time is right we’ll get to see that?

Elijah: Exactly. When the time is right we’re going to make a great concert.

So to cap off this busy year you’re having, you recently released a live album, was that something you’ve always wanted to do? How did that come about?

Elijah: We listened to PANTERA‘s live album so much, we listened to DISTURBED at Red Rocks, and we listened to METALLICA live which is sometimes not as fun as listening to their record – Lars – I hope Lars never hears this. But we definitely get a different vibe live, our record is very much a studio record and we get across what we can through that. In real life on a stage we’re much more ferocious, I think we’re much angrier, it’s different, maybe not completely different, but a very unique view of the music we make. So we wanted to kind of showcase the differences and be like “suck it, we are this good live”

So did you record multiple shows from that tour, or pick one date specifically?

Elijah: Yeah it was definitely multiple different shows, it was like a medley of Deep South shows which is always fun. It worked out. So it was multiple different shows which I think worked out really well because you get this broad range. Because the songs and how we play them definitely depend on how the crowd is at the show and where we are in the country – like even down to what I say onstage, I’m not one of those guys that says the same thing every single night. I just like to have fun and the rest of the guys just like to kind of fuck off the whole time, so going to different places gives us a chance to show the whole sphere of what we are live.

Your set contains so much energy visually too, would you consider going that one step further and releasing a live DVD?

Elijah: Oh hell yeah! The day that we can fill a venue of like 2000 people and make it look cool, we’ll definitely do it.

So do you have any specific goals in mind for the future of CANE HILL?

Elijah: We want to just get better at making music. Honestly filling venues is every band’s goal, but we just want to become better musicians, better singers, better everything, get weirder, get normaler.

So we’ve talked a lot about music, what do you like to do away from music when you’re not on tour?

Elijah: We all just hang out with our dogs, play Fortnite, or Dark Souls, or Skyrim, we’re waiting for James to get Red Dead Redemption 2 so I can just watch him fucking play that for seven hours. So we don’t do much, I mean we’ve been rehearsing two-three times a week for the past six years, like before we were even CANE HILL we’ve always done that every week which is very time consuming. We write pretty much non-stop, hence the album after album thing. So there’s not really any true downtime, we hang out with our dogs and our loved ones but always go right back to doing band shit.

So with 2018 now at an end, what can we expect from CANE HILL in 2019 and beyond?

Elijah: EP release, possibly some new singles off of a record that we have not written yet, doing festival season out in Europe which will be fun, and we’re probably going to continue to say things like “fuck Trump, smoke weed”.

So just to cap it off, do you have any words for our Distorted Sound readers?

Elijah: Buy my EP so I can have money to buy weed.

Kill The Sun is set for release 18th January via Rise Records. 

Like CANE HILL on Facebook.