Interview with Ryland Blackinton of Cobra Starship

Words by Brendan Monteiro/ photo by Matthew Salacuse

Recently playing their biggest headline show in London and reaching every square inch of radio waves possible with their latest single Good Girls Go Bad, it’s no wonder why Cobra Starship have the music world in the palm of their hands. They have great songs matched with bright personality’s and an impeccable taste for humour. Recently Clink got some time to talk to Ryland Blackinton about new wives, googling himself and single handedly creating the worlds first non singing supergroup.

You had an amazing show in London, how has the tour been now that it’s all over?

I felt like it went really well, last night was the biggest venue that we have played since we have been over here so that was really cool. I have been to that venue in maybe 2002, I saw a show there and thought it was a nice space so we were really happy to play there and the crowd was great. It was bittersweet though because it was our last show of the tour and the last time we got to play with The Plasticines. It was very sad, nobody likes to say goodbye to four beautiful french girls in a band

I can sympathize with you there, can you take somebody who has just stumbled across Cobra Starship through the early days of the band?

Yeah sure let me give you the genesis of it, Alex the bass player and I went to high school together and we moved up to New York at about the same time. We met Gabe just from going out at night and basically he had these songs that he had been working on and he asked us if we wanted to go on tour. At the time Alex was delivering groceries and I was catering so we said yeah. It is still the early years of this band because technically we have only been a band for three years now but that’s the long and short of it as they say.

There is definitely a much longer winded story on wikipedia that seems at times a little spiced up and far fetched, are there any so called facts on yourself or the band that you can correct?

Wikipedia is definitely an unsubstantiated source for facts, it says that I’m 6’6 but I’m actually 6’5 but you can believe what you want in the tabloids but there is no one combing through that stuff to check if it’s correct. Like every once in a while I will, not every once in a while, twice a day I will google myself to see what’s happening and on my wikipedia at the bottom it will be like “and Ryland is married to Rachel” and some kid has jumped on there and posted to say that “I married Ryland” and it’s again hugely unsubstantiated I wont put it in a bibliography.

Yourself and Alex where both in This Is Ivy League, how hard was it to leave that when Gabe come to you with the Cobra Starship proposal?

We didn’t really have huge aspirations for Ivy League, it was kind of just a pipe dream as they say. I wasn’t ever really interested in going on tour or achieving anything as a musician, it was more a hobby that we were doing. When we had the opportunity to go on tour with this band it was tough to not be able to spend as much time on it but obviously it was a shift in the right direction career wise. It’s not going anywhere though and we will always do Ivy League records, we will just never tour but tours are a drag anyway you know.

Gabe comes from the Midtown background, if you could choose any band from Midtown’s era to be in, which band would it be?

That’s a good question and Gabe is in the car so it makes it even trickier, contrary to popular belief and my wikipedia page I missed out on that whole pop punk. I heard Midtown from my friends and stuff but if I had to pick any band that was around in that scene it would be which ever broke up the quickest and did the least because it’s just not my bag.

Either Gabe or Alex suggests “Piebald”

Oh actually yeah Piebald is technically in that scene, I don’t know if you have heard them

No, neither heard them or heard of them sadly.

I don’t really think they were that big over here but they are a band from Massachusetts. They started out and it was called screamo then but now it’s sort of changed and evolved but it was screamo, they started to get a little poppy but they always had this riffy stuff. They always cited Led Zeppelin and AC/DC and so they always had this classic rock sort of influence that I responded to. That and the fact that they were like regionally close to where I was so it was cool and it was easy to follow them around a lot, I seen them a tonnes of times.

And what if I had to ask you to construct your own super group, who would be in it?

I would say, give me a moment here. I think Justin Bieber on drums.

Ok before we carry on, who is Justin Bieber?

Are you fore real?

I have no idea who he is, I don’t watch much T.V.

No I’m only kidding, it’s Ok if you don’t know who Justin Bieber is, I envy you in some ways. Justing Bieber is kind of the Jedward of the United States, he’s this 15 year old kid that Usher discovered and he’s a really good singer, dancer and drummer. I would have Jedward as the dancer’s. Actually that would be the whole band, Beiber on drums with no singing, just playing beats and Jedward dancing around.

So your not going to throw Vanilla Ice in there just for a laugh?

No Vanilla Ice would be there manager, I don’t think he’s in the creative part of it anymore. He would just be side stage shining his teeth.

That has got to be the most unique line up I have ever heard of, let’s just hope that Mr Winkle (Vanilla Ice) doesn’t get them to sample other people’s music without giving out credit’s or royalties when due.

Yeah and they would sell millions too, just as long as I get 20%.

What sort of hand sign would you come up with for this super group?

Ah that is a good question, it wouldn’t be a hand sign, they would all just fix there bangs. That would be the gang thing for them, just a quick fix of the bangs. That would be there unifying gesture.

Popularity for Cobra Starship has grown considerably and it’s not just down to your bangs, what do you think has been the main reason for that?

I think that Good Girls Go Bad was the main incident that brought us more into the public eye. The radio makes a huge difference, we didn’t know how much of a huge difference it would make, especially with the audience that comes out to see you. You find that the demographic widens significantly because you have 30 year old women listening to it at their desks and you also have friends of disney type of acts that are responsive to it too. So that was a really cool spike in audience attendance so I think that would definitely be the song that did it, in the states anyway because that one went pretty high up on the charts but I wouldn’t really know because I only go and listen twice a day.

ha only twice a day, with rising popularity you probably would experience new fans coming in but their might be some animosity between old fans and new fans. What is your response to old fans ridiculing new fans?

Man that’s just one of those things that when your at that age, 16 or 17, music is so sacred to you and important and something that you hold very near and dear to your heart. When someone that you think isn’t cool or rather someone is really popular starts listening to it, for example your younger brother starts listening to it, it feels as if it’s less personal and doesn’t belong to you anymore. I think it’s a common thing and people do it all the time with bands but I guess that there is nothing that you can really do to change that fact. I think that we have actually been really lucky that a lot of our core fans have really just rolled with it and I think that some people would call it selling out but I think we were just able to find the right sound and it worked out for us. Our core fans know that it is still us, that our personality is still very prevalent and so I am thankful for that.

To an extent thought was that not the plan for the band from the beginning, to reach out to as big an audience as possible?

I don’t know, I kind of came in halfway through the second chapter but yeah that is certainly a part. I know that with Gabe’s band before, it was different in that regard, so I am sure that it was an influence.

And do you feel that the band still has the same drive and thirst to succeed as it did in the early days?

Yeah, we are very hard workers, especially Gabe. He has an amazing ability to speak to people for a long long time on the telephone, it’s dazzling and amazing and sparks fly off of his lips.

He’s staring at me.

We do have a good work ethic maybe when we were younger that wasn’t so true, actually for Gabe that probably isn’t true because he was wearing suits when he was six years old he had an office too.

from the background Gabe says “I used to buy gum at the supermarket and then sell it”

Yeah he used to buy gum at the supermarket to people at school, he has always had that sort of tenacity. We all are in mid to late twenty’s, Gabe’s 47, Im only kidding he’s actually 42. We definitely have a clear goal and we are definitely hard workers and don’t take a lot of time off, I have never been on vacation before. Were very level headed in that regard and I think we work just as hard in the beginning as we do now.

And you still have time to thank all the people that have had a helping hand in the band along it’s journey.

If we didn’t thank those people it would be dishonest because we owe a lot to the people that helped us out in the beginning so we always make sure that we shout them out at every opportunity that we have, help them out in any way that we can. We still work for a lot of them too so you got to keep the boss happy.

There are three names you always give a shout out to, what role did William Becket, Travis McCoy and Samuel L Jackson play?

Apart from being the bands that initially took us out on our first tour, they were all also featured on our first single which was on the Snakes On A Plane soundtrack song. That’s why we thank Samuel L Jackson too, he didn’t really do anything other than lending us his likeness but that was the springboard.

I feel that Cobra Starship has broken a lot of boundaries, what bands do you think are driving music into new and exciting directions?

Well I am very flattered that you think that but I don’t want to seem like I am putting us on the same pedestal as some of these people that I think that are pushing things. There are two groups that I think have big sophomore records that pushed it on their first record and I am really looking forward to them. They would be Justice’s new record and MGMT’s new record, I don’t put us anywhere near those guys. Oh and Ratatat, have you ever heard of them.

I just started getting in to them lately.

There new record is definitely blow some socks off, they are definitely pushing the bar and it’s music of the future.

Well that’s it for questions, good luck with the tour in the states with 3oh3! and thanks for taking the time out to answer some questions.

Thank you, I appreciate that very much and thank you for taking the time to speak to me.

This post is tagged Alex Suarez, Atlantic Records, Cobra Starship, Decaydance, Fueled by Ramen, Gabe Saporta, Nate Novarro, Ryland Blackinton, Victoria Asher