Los Angeles-based EDM rock duo Ready Never are still riding high on the success of their viral video and single, “Take That Pill,” but Benny Ed and Clinton Karcher are continuing to develop their genre-melding sound as they prepare for future work and create new ways to advance their performance in a live atmosphere.

Ed recently took some time to speak with us in depth about the band’s unique style, the ideas found in “Take This Pill” and its accompanying video, and how one YouTube user referred to him as a future Justin Bieber, so get acquainted with Ready Never after the jump as you get the whole scoop straight from one half of this up-and-coming act.

You guys have kind of an interesting set-up as far as the band goes. Can you explain how each member is involved for our readers?

Our band set-up is comprised of myself on bass and vocals, as well as a MicroKorg and laptop as I work with the sequences at various moments throughout the show; then there is Clinton Karcher on drums with the help of in-ear monitors for him to keep up with the sequences and the flow of all the interludes throughout; and we have also been known to invite fellow musicians / producers to come up and join us when we have the chance, which allows for us to either create a completely organic moment or add to the show as it is. We also do pure DJ sets with myself and musician / producer Sean Mahaffey.

How would you compare your live show to how things are worked out when recording? Is Rudi (co-songwriter) involved in the live setting at all or will he be at some point?

Our first album, which was released just this year, was created solely with our laptops and keyboards. When we started with the initial ideas for the first set of songs, I was on tour with another band and Rudi was working in Chile, so we would exchange recording sessions online. Soon there after, I went to produce a rock music series in Argentina, and I stopped in Chile to work with Rudi. He had already delved deep into the arrangement and production of the songs that would be the core of the first Ready Never album when I began to write the lyrics and record vocals.

For the live show, we experimented with different set-ups, but ultimately, it was important for me to feel like it was still a band and not a DJ set-up; and it was right then that Clinton literally showed up and said, “I love what you guys are doing, I want to play the drums for this project.” In the live setting, we add a lot of fusion to our sound with my bass style and the drums add more of a rock element as well. We essentially jam out our electronic music through our natural instruments. As far as Rudi joining us in the live setting, he knows he is always welcome to join us on stage, and from time to time, when he has the time, he does just that. We want to have the same kind of partnership with every producer we work with in the future as well, especially since we are essentially a drum and bass duo, our configuration lends itself well to that idea of making the producer the honorary third member of the band.

I’ve always been fascinated with musicians that multitask on stage. You’re essentially playing bass, singing, looping sequences and playing your MicroKorg and such all simultaneously. Do you ever get overwhelmed in the moment or kind of blank on your next move or does it all come naturally at this point?

I spent many years as a touring rock bass player and with those gigs came the additional responsibility of providing vocal harmonies. I thought that was hard enough – rocking the bass, feeling the crowd, and hitting my vocals marks; but then came the multitasking I was attempting for Ready Never, and it was like I was a chicken with my head cut off. I was running to the keyboard, grabbing for my bass, swinging over for the microphone, trying to remember which pedals I was supposed to hit next; and I was missing one of the most important things about fronting a musical performance – I was forgetting about connecting with the audience.

So I started paying more attention to DJs and noticing that a very large percentage of them don’t actually do anything “live” on stage. Many are making great live sets at home and then just pressing play and feeling the crowd. Most of the knob-turning and such is just part of the show; they could get the crowd into a frenzy just by pumping their fist in the air at the right moments for the big drops. I realized that I was getting too technical for Ready Never, and it was causing me to feel, well, “ready never.”

So now I choose a handful of moments where I can add some synths, and a handful of moments where I can throw down a fusion slap bass solo, and I have maybe three places where I can trigger the show to lead into different directions, all the while I have a visual communication with the drummer so as to insure we are on the same page. As far as the sequences are concerned, I have had help from both Rudi and our in-house remixer, Sean Mahaffey, who now joins me on stage whenever we are asked to do a purely electronic DJ set. For our next album, we hope to add more live bass and drums, and as Rudi moves on to other projects, we hope to have the same success and connection with our next producer / co-writer.

There aren’t a lot of acts doing the organic EDM rock thing with live instrumentation, so you’re basically ahead of the curve on that. Are there any bands or artists that you would say have influenced your sound, or at least the individual elements of it?

I grew up going to Phish concerts, and once I started listening to more house music and I went to a few raves, I realized that there are a lot of similarities between good jam music and good EDM; they both are great for people who want to dance, and they both are more focused on the drop, or the climactic musical peak, then in any given song, per se. If you look at the festival scene in 2014, you’ll notice a lot of jam bands headlining alongside the big names in the EDM world, so I’m sure there will be even more cross-pollinating within the two genres.

As far as Ready Never, we are kind of just going with wherever the project takes us. We are also willing to change radically in the future. That’s the great thing about being indie. We have no pressure from any label or company, we can do or be whatever we wan, which is nice, since we are always changing our minds anyway.

Eleutherophobia is a mouthful for an album title, and for those too lazy to Google its meaning, it means “fear of freedom.” Why did you choose it and how would you say the title is relevant to the material on the album?

We actually chose the album name after we finished the album. The album is full of satirical lyrics, basically mocking our way of life. It’s as if all the things that are supposed to give us more freedom in this world somehow seem to enslave us; whether it be our phones in “My Eye Know Might,” our medicine in “Take That Pill,” or our selves in “Me, Myself, and I,” there always seems to be something that distracts us from being free – from being in the present moment. We truly live in a “ready never” world, where we are constantly on the go, enslaved by the next thing; always ready, never satisfied. Sometimes this is good, sometimes this worries me about our future.

1.5 million views on your video for “Take That Pill.” Did you expect that kind of response when you uploaded the video online?

I didn’t expect that kind of response, but when I got a call on the second day of the video being released that the video was on the front page of YouTube, I knew we would be getting a lot of eyes on it. It stayed on that front page for a good amount of days, and has won various online music video contests, not to mention the television press it received in Argentina at the time.

The video has a lot going on. Costumes, dance numbers, interesting women, and you’ve got a kind of Vanilla Ice meets Riff Raff thing going on. How did these ideas all come into play? And it was shot in Argentina too, right?

We filmed that video with a great team in Cordoba, Argentina. We gained a good amount of attention while making the video. I can’t deny that I have a lot of fun when I’m in Argentina, and that trip was pretty crazy; full of wild moments. I’m Chilean-American so I speak Spanish fluently, and whenever I’m in South America, I have a particularly good time. The ideas for the aesthetics just kind of came to be. The idea for a dance move was suggested by the director, Teodoro Ciampagna, and then I kinda just came up with the dance with some of the girls. It was just one big party for me, a lot of laughing and allowing for all the participants to bring their ideas to the video. It was easy for me to just go with the flow while I was there too, as there was much to keep me preoccupied.

The song is a satire but you’ve already caught some flak due to people jumping to conclusions, claiming that you’re glorifying drug use. I’d assume that had to be expected on your part but do you feel that the backlash will hurt your overall brand down the line if those themes aren’t something you plan to explore regularly in your music?

We had so much positive feedback from people enjoying the video, and sharing it on Facebook and Twitter; especially young people. It was cool to see it spread. I guess that’s what it means when people use the word “viral”; it just seemed to spread like a small virus for a couple of weeks. We also got a decent amount of haters. That first month, we deleted a lot of negative comments about the video, and looking back, I regret having deleted those comments, because that is what YouTube and social media is all about, it’s about opening up a conversation. People that don’t know us are free to decide what this song and video is all about.

To me, it’s a parody – we are sarcastically celebrating our pill-popping society in “Take that Pill”; but for some people, the video represented just another over-produced pop act. If those people only knew we were just a group of indie artists having a good time making a fun video. I did see comments of people calling me a drug addict, and one of the funniest comments was when someone said I was “Justin Bieber 10 years from now.” That was funny. There have been people that have said it will hurt our overall brand in the future, because we actually are serious musicians, but we also don’t care, as long as we are working to make something we like at the time. It concerned me a little when some people mistook me for a “youtuber” or comedian; but I can’t really worry about that, the Beastie Boys have done rap albums, satirical music videos, and instrumental jazz records; they just grew and their supporters grew with them. Of course, so many artists feel like they are beyond their last project, but it should all be part of the narrative. I won’t be doing any more videos like the first set of videos we did, but I also love those videos, they represented that moment; now on to the next one. Ready never…

Do you already know which track you’ll focus on next for a single?

We are working on a couple of tracks with Rudi, that he and I may sell or we may use for Ready Never. He is also helping me choose the next producer for Ready Never. I have written a handful of new songs on my own but they are too dark and alternative for RN. Left to my own accord, I tend to write bass-heavy songs about death, drugs, and lost time. I enjoy working with others and I’m excited to see what comes next for RN.

With Eleutherophobia having been released a few months ago, are you primarily focusing on the promotion for that still or have you already begun working on your next effort for RN?

Our goal is to have another album, or at least an EP by September, or possibly sooner. We hope these songs will be a little closer to the sound we get when we play live; but first we’d like to settle on which of our songwriter / producer friends we will work with next.

What do you all have going on outside of Ready Never? Are there other projects or major hobbies that take up some of your time?

Yes, Clinton is working on a new music studio facility in Santa Monica and I am helping him with some of the management responsibilities. I am just finishing the Beny Ed Series with filmmaker, Kevin McMahon. This is an avant-garde music video web series based around some of my alt-rock songs. You can check that out on YouTube. Rudi has recently moved on to focus on other projects as a film composer but he and I are still writing some material together for commercial purposes. Sean Mahaffey has a solo EDM project that he is working on, and he hopes to release his debut work soon.

What can we expect from Ready Never for the remainder of the year? Do you think you might surprise yourselves and be ready for something at some point?

[Laughs] Unlikely, we are still Ready Never…

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Brian Leak

Editor-In-Chief. King of forgetting drinks in the freezer. Pop culture pack rat. X-Phile. LOST apologist.

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