Butcher Babies' Carla Harvey

By Jay Oakley

How was the set?

It was awesome, this place is really cool. On this tour we've been able to play big festivals and then little tiny bars like this and it's been a blast. Also Fish Head Cantina has great sushi F.Y.I. and great soup so that's always a plus as well.

Do you have a preference between festivals versus clubs?

I like them both. I like a mix because it's great to see all the fans at the big festivals and then it's also great to get an intimate venue like this. I've always loved punk rock venues. I love the energy, I love getting up close and personal with the fans so my heart will always be in these punk rock clubs but there is something real special about walking out onto the main stage at a festival with thousands and thousands of people rocking out to your music so it's the best of both worlds.

You just got done playing with Gwar and Battlecross so I've got to ask you how that tour went?

Oh, it was so much fun. Gwar's great, the fans come ready to party and ready to hang out. Battlecross, we toured with them on the Mayhem Festival and they're great guys. They're from my home town, Detroit, and they call them Blue-Collar Thrash Metal which I kind of love that, being from Detroit and it brings back a lot of memories of growing up and being a thrash metal kid so it was a great tour with those guys.

Well, Detroit is one of the working class capitals of the world.

Yeah, all of our dads worked at car factories growing up and it's very blue-collar but there's a certain honor that comes with being a blue-collar worker I think and being the kid of a blue-collar worker. Just really genuine, hard working people and I'm proud to be from that kind of background.

So, your new album, Take It Like A Man, has been out for a little while now. How are you feeling about the reception and how it's been going since it's release?

The reception has been great for Take It Like A Man. As far as reviews, the reviews have been great but what matters most to us is the fans have really dug it. Tonight you could see, everyone singing along to all the songs and the album just came out a month ago or so and it means so much to us that people are loving the lyrics and loving the songs and connecting to it and there's no greater thrill in the world then to see someone appreciate your art like that. To really connect to the lyrics that you've written about your own life and singing back to you because they mean so much to them as well.

Yeah, I ran into Heidi (Shepherd) just kind of in passing earlier today and we were talking about the album and I was telling her that "Never Go Back" is my personal standout track. It's your second single, it's on the radio, people are hearing it and I know that a lot of people can tie into it but that was the one that I gravitated to and connected with.

Awesome! The great thing about "Never Go Back" is that song could be about anything. It could be about a bad relationship, it could be about drug abuse, it could be about anything that you never want to go back to and I love songs like that because the listener can take it and make it apply to whatever's going on in their life at the time and I think that's important. Music saved my life and I just hope to help other people through my own music and give people a voice.

How much longer do you for this tour?

We are going to be out until December, early December and then we get to go home for a month and a half or so and then we have another big tour coming up that we can't talk about yet but it's going to be pretty cool. I think people are going to be excited about it.

Cool, is it a bigger-type thing like a festival or is more about the bands you'll be playing with?

It's the band that we're playing with hasn't toured in a while so it will be interesting for people to see I think.

Is that going to be an "all-over" tour?

I haven't even seen the dates yet but I know it's a decently long tour so it'll probably be all over the country and hopefully we'll see you guys on the road soon.

Sounds good. Carla, thank you so much for taking a couple minutes to talk and taking the time to play tonight.

Thank you. No problem.