In-depth Interview With Scale The Summit’s Chris Letchford

Interview by Taylor Younani

Houston, Texas quartet Scale The Summit have been redefining the realms of progressive music in their decade-long existence thus far, and their 2013 full-length Prosthetic Records release ‘The Migration’ is a case in point. As they almost always are, the all-instrumental Scale The Summit currently on the road co-headlining a North American run with Glass Cloud along with support acts ERRA, Reflections and Monuments. Our writer Taylor Younani attended the LA show of this tour at the Lyric on August 4th, and after Scale The Summit’s set, had a chat with guitarist/principal songwriter Chris Letchford. Enjoy the conversation below.

Chris, how did you feel the show went tonight? This is, like you said, something like the 16th show on your run this year and you guys have top billing.

It was good. We sold out within like an hour of doors opening, so that makes for a fun show when it’s packed with a crowd. Yeah… awesome show, super hot, kind of a weird stage at the venue but it was cool.

You guys have been celebrating, for the last year, your fourth album, and I was talking to you earlier about how I have seen you many times and it is nice to see the natural progression of your music. How was this creative process? Did you feel like it was different than before or a natural progression of things?

Probably just natural. I’m always just writing and what comes out comes out. So I don’t really plan a direction for a record, and kind of just write what I write and whatever happens just happens. Migration just kind of naturally evolved. Obviously that’s the first record Mark has done with us so having him around to add new layers and stuff was definitely cool.

Did you feel like with your approach to this new album there were any outside influences on your playing?

No, not really. I’m trying to think of if there were any new bands that I have found. I mean, The Reign of Kindo, but I wouldn’t say they influenced my music per se. They inspired me to be a better musician overall.

The last time you spoke with Metal Assault, I believe with Andrew, he talked a little bit about a prog cruise you did recently. Tell me a little bit about that. 

We were in Cozumel and we were supposed to go to Honduras but something weird happened. Someone was murdered in Honduras like the day before on a cruise line, so they just cancelled going there and we just stayed in Cozumel for two days instead. But yeah, it was a cruise with Yes and so it was like an ultimate nerdy prog cruise. We had the time of our lives on that cruise; I mean it was so professional. We had like an outside show on the ship on a giant stage and we had a question and answer show, you know? Food paid for, four individual rooms. You know, it was just a free cruise but we also got to jam out.

That is awesome! I just went on a cruise recently myself, but it was not free! Like I said earlier I have seen you guys a lot and you always tend to group up with bands that not only have vocals, but metal bands of various sub-genres. Do you feel like you are always well received or is it ever a struggle?

Yeah, actually. Believe it or not, we’ve played black metal shows and indie rock shows. We will hold our own. We kind of build our set list for each tour around who we’re playing with. When we toured with Periphery we played heavier stuff and on this tour we did heavier stuff, but since this is a co-headliner and we are drawing out our own fans, we played our normal stuff even though glass cloud is like super-heavy. It all depends, but for the most part the reception is awesome.

You guys and a couple other bands, I feel like every time I’ve seen you the crowd stops what they’re doing and just watch your band. No matter the toughest guys that are in there…

That’s actually a good point. Travis actually got off stage and was like, “The crowd was kind of quiet compared to last time,” and I was like, “Yeah, but they were paying attention.” I could tell. You could always tell on certain nights when we are playing really quiet spots when people are talking. But it was like quiet spot, dead silent, which I thought was very cool. I think it’s awesome to grab people’s attention and build our atmospheric parts.

Yeah you know, one time I saw you guys in Hollywood and it was actually with Between the Buried and Me, Devin Townsend and Cynic, and that was one of those shows where I felt like for 4 hours I just had my jaw dropped.

That tour was one of the best ever; so much fun. We shared a bus with Between the Buried and Me on that tour. It was just spoiling; just awesome.

On a semi-related note, talking about you guys as an instrumental band but was there ever a point in Scale the Summit’s history where you entertained the idea of vocals?

Only back before we were Scale the Summit really. Travis had joined Into the Moat and we were kind of dropped down to where it would be guitar-bass-drums. And I thought, “Guitar, bass, drums, singer,” but it wasn’t going to be Scale the Summit style music. We were going to completely change but I ended up finishing a song which became “Omni” on our first album Monument sent it to Travis and he said, “Never mind, I am coming back”. And that convinced him to come back and here we are. One time I think we were all fed up because back when we started touring there was no Animals as Leaders, there weren’t any instrumental bands out there killing it. We were fed up. No promoters would give us a chance, booking agents wouldn’t give us a chance… no one would take a look at us. It came to be from hard work. I mean, we obviously paved the way because now there are like a dozen instrumental bands touring. It’s kind of cool to see because no one gave a shit when we first started touring. It was pretty frustrating at first. We were never like, Let’s do it,” but we had been like, “Is this the missing link?” And sure enough it wasn’t. We just had to stick to it and keep doing what we are doing.

The only piece of merch I bought at that show was a Scale the Summit shirt because you know, for me, growing up listening to metal and getting into, this ‘type’ of metal, earlier on it was nice to have a band there that was setting a tone that was not so typical.

Right on! Even the Devin Townsend crew… all of the guys were shocked. The guys would tell us, “I can’t believe the response to that instrumental band. You guys I can’t believe the crowd response.” I remember the LA show. House Of Blues, sold out show. It was awesome. Every night the energy was badass. We just fit with all those bands so well. We have a little bit of Cynic in us and a little bit of BTBAM… I guess we don’t have much Devin Townsend in us but…

Devin has all of you guys in him.

He is awesome.

You guys also just recently went to Europe a couple months ago with Intronaut. How was the reception over there?

It was cool, but you know, the routing was just rough. We had like 3-4 hours of sleep every night and 7-hour plus drives every day. This was coming off two months of touring in the States and we went home for a couple of days and then right to Europe so we were all fucking beat, you know. We got a whole month in a foreign country completely shut off from our homes and whatnot. The shows were cool but we were so tired… I just felt like I drudged though the whole thing and don’t really remember much. It was just show, show, show, show, show.

I can’t imagine. I recently saw Twelve Foot Ninja opening up for Periphery, Dead Letter Circus and Born of Osiris, and they had some travel problems getting over here with visas. They ended up getting to LA, missing the first show of the tour, at like noon. It was their first show and they were, of course, jet lagged as hell and they went on at 5:30 and started moving on to the next city. I couldn’t believe it.

And you know the thing about jet lag is it doesn’t matter if you have to play that day, even the next week… it’s still all kinds of messed up. We arrived in Belgium at like 10 at night the day before our first show and I couldn’t sleep all night because it was daytime. It was all kinds of messed up. To have to do that for four weeks and come back… we arrived Christmas Eve, having to do family stuff, I was completely out of it. It was brutal. Hopefully we can go back and do it properly, you know, get there two days before the first show. Do things with better travel too, that was really the main thing. Obviously touring with Intronaut was fun because we had done it in the States already, so touring with them again was awesome.

They are one of those bands that I feel is an excellent mesh with what you guys do.

Yeah they have the prog elements, and the heavy. It worked well when we did it, the first tour for ‘The Migration’ with them in the States, so…

Could you talk a little bit about your new solo project?

Yeah, “Lightbox” came out July 15th and I collaborated with the guys from The Reign of Kindo, the drummer and piano player. Evan Brewer did four songs of bass and Mark Michelle did six songs of bass. I don’t know, it’s just kind of a jazz fusion record I’ve been writing. I labeled it jazz fusion as a way to describe it to people, but really it’s just music. I was doing all clean guitar stuff and added piano for the first time. I had never done a record with piano and you know that was my goal, to get some badass piano on there. That guy and Steve the drummer just killed it.

Very cool! On that note you guys are obviously here to stay and only gaining more of a fan base. I think every show I go to I see more and more Scale fans, so for the readers out there, keep your eyes and ears peeled because I don’t think this band is stopping. Right?

I hope not! We are finishing up writing record number five and that’s a landmark for a lot of bands in this day and age. A lot of them don’t make it to five. A lot of them don’t even make it to two, you know? So I’m stoked we are still here and still relevant and still pushing the boundaries.

Related: Gig Review: Glass Cloud, Scale The Summit, Monuments & Others Play At The Lyric

Scale The Summit links: website | facebook | twitter

Remaining US tour dates:
8/12 – Knoxville, TN – The Concourse
8/13 – Greensboro, NC – Blind Tiger
8/14 – Jacksonville, FL – 1904 Music Hall
8/15 – Pembroke Pines, FL – Propaganda
8/16 – Orlando, FL – Backbooth
8/17 – Atlanta, GA – Vinyl @ Center Stage
8/19 – Fort Worth, TX – Tomcats
8/20 – Austin, TX – Red 7
8/21 – Houston, TX – Fitzgerald’s

Comments

comments