I learned about Poynte about a year ago when they showed suddenly up on my Facebook news feed. As I do with anything new regarding music, I clicked and instantly became a fan. The band is based in Atlanta, Georgia and includes vocalist, Kenny Hathorne, guitarist, Matt Bryant, guitarist/vocalist, Jake O’Donnell, bassist, Ben Greener, and drummer, Josh Fulcher. Kenny and Matt are the two remaining founding members of the band. They are dedicated members that prove continuously that this is what they are destined to do. Kenny doesn’t let anything stand in his way, including the titanium jaw that he now has as a result of a scissor lift accident that took months to recover from. Now that’s commitment! Though the band has suffered some lineup changes, they are now solid, structured, and ready to catapult their career. Their music has meaning and the songs are sung with pure, raw emotion while the band carries the melody with perfection to endorse each lyric. In 2015 they toured with Trapt and Sons of Texas, and have shared the stage with 10 Years, Nonpoint, Shinedown, Godsmack, Papa Roach, Saliva, Drowning Pool, Fuel, All That Remains, and Taproot in the past. In April 2016, they will begin their tour to promote their CD, Discreet Enemy. Vocalist, Kenny Hathorne let me poke around in his mind today as we discussed the CD, the thought process behind the lyrics of its most powerful songs, and the tour that they are about to kick off. They are ready to show the world that Poynte is a loaded weapon ready to fire.
Interview with Kenny Hathorne of Poynte
By: Leslie Elder Rogers
Metal Exiles: Discreet Enemy has been out for a year and you are just now kicking a lot of things into high gear. What has transpired for you guys in the last year since it dropped?
Kenny: Well, since we released the album, not just positive feedback but a lot of doors have opened up, a lot of opportunities for the band to grow and gain a fan base. Before we were just kind of hitting it up in our region, the southeast region area and our hometown and now, since the release it’s been nothing but positive things for the band. Having an opportunity now to release another video for our self-titled album Discreet Enemy for the song “Take Control”, is very exciting. We are going to be touring in April; the whole month of April. Since we started touring with that album, it opened up the door for us to be able to tour again. We met people that said “hey, you wanna do this”, so like I said, it has just opened up a lot of new opportunities for the band. Musically too, being inspired on the road, when you’re with your band mates, locked up in a can for 30 days, you really get to know each other and you take all that in and then release it out onto paper and into the music so, it’s pretty cool.
Metal Exiles: Speaking of “Take Control”, I saw that you had finally chosen a director, are you able to elaborate on who you’ve chosen to direct the video yet?
Kenny: As of now, there are a couple of people we really want to work with but we can’t say for sure who until we have dotted all of the i’s and crossed all of the t’s. We’re trying to get all the stuff lined up and the thing is we have a lengthy time to get ready. We have until the end of March to get ready but realistically, when you set up for tour like this and for a release for a single and some other things, the time goes by so quickly so you feel like there isn’t enough time to do what we are about to do.
Metal Exiles: Me being from Macon, so close to Atlanta, I see that over the past few decades Atlanta has dropped some great bands on the rock scene and now you are taking your place as well. What is it about Atlanta and rock bands that just mesh well?
Kenny: I love Atlanta. It’s a cesspool for all kinds of music and there’s so much talent out here. It’s inspiring for me too, even just as listener. I think for the most part it’s just the southeast in general. Rock and roll has been around for a long time and we grew up listening to it. The kids that listen to it aren’t like a “clique” or anything, in fact, it’s more like a big brotherhood or family and we all like lifting each other up. That’s what I love about Atlanta.
Metal Exiles: It is breaking my heart that The Masquerade, one of the coolest venues in Atlanta to me, is closing. Other bands, like Attila, have already expressed their displeasure over it. What’s your thought on that?
Kenny: It’s tearing me up because I’ve played so many shows there. I’ve seen so many shows there and for that place not to be an active venue, that’s gonna be soul crushing for me. An Attila, yeah, this is their hometown too. It’s where they got started and they’ve played a lot of shows there. They used to actually be around the same area as me. I lived in Lawrenceville and they are from Lawrenceville and we all knew each other. I play a different style of music obviously but we all are in that same music scene. I guess we just have to enjoy it while it lasts. I’ve talked to people that work there and they said they don’t even know when exactly the closing date is. I guess it’s just it’s just going to be like “alright, we’re shutting it down” one day, and that’ll be it, like a surprise.
Metal Exiles: Discreet Enemy is a massive undertaking. What is a discreet enemy and how does it represent the album to you?
Kenny: To me, a discreet enemy is like a personal friend that you could trust with anything, that you could let your guard down with and then they just take advantage of that. I don’t know what it means for everyone else, but I kind of use it as a tool. For example, at the time I wrote “Take Control”, I was going through a very political time in my life and it was like people just like to say which way to go all the time and which things are best for you and such. I mean why not ask people what they really want and don’t just force feed stuff down their throat. So that was my first political touch. I’d never really done that before and that’s kind of the story behind “Take Control”. Something personal happened to me and it inspired the ability to create the song and I then refined it into what it was in the end result.
Metal Exiles: The prelude-intro into Discreet Enemy is comprised of a series of numbers, is that some type of code or meaning behind it?
Kenny: It is a code. We didn’t just put random numbers. It was thought out and we want people to figure it out. There’s a pattern on the album art and if you look it, there’s a code that has the numbers and letters and it can help you spell it out. If you figure it out, we will give you something. We put a lot of work into this album. We pretty much made it ourselves. We produced it ourselves. We made our first music video ourselves. We made the tracks. We bought the cameras. We got the lights. I mean, we did it all. We got the place and made it work. We did all the editing. Now we actually have an opportunity to work with someone and we can put it in their hands to give us their ideas and help with executing it. The ideas they’ve come up with are amazing. I’m really excited about it. We’ve got some surprises. We are going to release a couple of new singles just to give people something new to listen to because we’ve been working on other music. We sat on Discreet Enemy for like you said, about a year, so we’re kind of ready and anxious to play something new.
Metal Exiles: The album flows through a lot of emotions from “Take Control” to “Erase Me”, “In My Head”, and of course, one of my favorites “Picture Frames”. I think they’re all great. What did it take to get all of this out of you guys and onto tape?
Kenny: “Picture Frames” is one of my personal favorites as well. When we first were writing the songs and coming up with the album, I’d already written a couple of songs lyrically, and they just crafted the music around the lyrics. A lot of the songs have real meaning. They’re not just stuff I made up. I mean, I embellish what happens but there’s truth to the story too. In “Nursery Crimes”, that story is real. It happened to a little girl in my area and when I heard the story from a friend who knew the owner of the home personally, I wrote the lyrics. Years later, that song just surfaced. I wanted to put it out there.
Metal Exiles: “Nursery Crimes” is dark and I know that it is a true story, but how did it create desire in you to write and sing about it?
Kenny: I worked with a friend that would come and pick me up to go to work every day and one day he just had this sick look on his face. He was completely pale. I asked what was up with him. He said that the guy he roomed with owned a duplex type home and was renting it out and the tenant was smelling an odor so his roommate sent a cleaning crew out there to clean the place. Then the tenant called again a couple of weeks later and said the smell was back. She’d been living there for nearly a year at this time. His roommate went out there with the cleaning crew the second time and they went over everything but couldn’t find the problem. Just out of curiosity, he went into the attic and saw the little 4 year old little girl’s body wrapped up, deceased and she’d apparently been there over a year. So I heard that story and it literally just poured out of me. I got to work. I was going to do these printing presses and I started to do that job but couldn’t stop thinking about this little girl so I grabbed a piece of paper and the lyrics just poured out. I came up with a scenario that wasn’t real. I just manifested this thought in my head that had happened so I went through multiple scenarios like a teacher noticing that the kid hadn’t been to school in quite some time and then moving to police officers telling neighbors to calm down, vaguely giving the story. Then moving onto a lawyer and then to the judge. It just all came together. It turned out really well. To make it happen, I just hummed this melody over and over and then the lyrics just came out with it. It was pretty wild. I could not believe that when I addressed the idea and what I’d come up with to Matt, it was kind of an acoustic song that I’d made with another friend, John, who played the guitar with me, but Matt blew me away with what he said he could do. It really pushed me to add so much emotion into the melody and the lyrics. He did the lyrics the way they deserved. I wanted it to be more of a story than just a regular song. As you can tell, it’s just a really long verse into a chorus. It doesn’t really do the typical verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge set up. I wanted to be straight forward and cut throat to the father that did it because in the real story, it turned out that her own father had strangled her to death and put her in the attic and fled. He was convicted but the sad part is, I found out the other day that he has already been released from prison. It’s pretty crazy.
Metal Exiles: One of the bigger stand outs is “Coping”. Where did this come from?
Kenny: I’m not going to mention any names or say exactly what happened because people in my home town will know exactly what I’m talking about but a person that had promised certain things to me and my band mates…and I’m not asking for handouts, because that’s not what happened or what we had intentions for. We just wanted some doors to be opened and she or he had promised they could deliver if we put in so much money and effort. So we put in all the work and saw nothing for a long time and when we talked about what needed to be done and where the money was going, we were told it was the cost of doing business. I just couldn’t take that. The cost of doing business with you? I’m already giving you 20% of what I’m making and giving you an additional off of my merch which you don’t even purchase. So, I was giving out a lot but nothing was coming back to me for quite some time. So in my mind, when I heard it was the cost of doing business, in my mind I heard “bleeding is coping”. I was like wow, so I wrote a song about it. I know it’s crazy and cut throat sounding “We write the lines you get behind, claiming your push is golden. What we make you try and take, leaving my insides stolen”. That’s how I honestly felt when that’s what I was told that because I really had nothing to give. We were and are still a growing band and for someone to take that much from you was just devastating. We had no problem with putting forth the work and effort and being a driving band because that’s exactly who we are with backing or not. We’re gonna continue to do what we’re doing. I personally am not going to stop. Anyway, that’s pretty much how that song came about. I was able to vent through music without putting some bad taste in everyone’s mouth by trash talking someone. I just put it out on paper. I still cordially see this person and I am very polite and I don’t harvest any bad feelings for the person at all. It was just at that moment in time when their business etiquette was much different than mine.
Metal Exiles: I don’t mean to dissect so many songs, but “The Villain” and the beauty behind the song and its sound gets to me. When you wrote it, did you originally write it to include a female backing vocalist?
Kenny: I did not write it for that to happen. I just wrote the song itself and then I had this call and response idea but when we put it out ourselves, it was just myself doing it and there was this echo thing. I thought it was ok but it wasn’t really doing what I wanted it to do. So Jake said he knew this girl that is an amazing vocalist and that it would be a cool concept since the song it about wanting someone to believe in you no matter what mistakes you’ve made before because having someone there supporting you is the best thing that could happen. When someone disbelieves, it’s just setting them up for failure so that’s kind of what I wanted to put behind the song; just because you’ve made mistakes doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Sami is amazing. When I first met her, I had no idea what to expect from a female vocalist because I’ve never really worked with one personally. I know there’s a lot of female rock vocalists out there and all but I didn’t know what to expect and she walked in and I didn’t really expect much but she just blew me out of the water. It really made the song for me. It made me sound better. I told her that she made me sound awesome and I don’t like the sound of my voice. People don’t understand why. When they have to listen to the playback, I don’t listen to my own music because it creeps me out to hear my own voice. With that song, I felt when I wrote the lyrics, I wanted someone to believe in me. I mean, the person that I’m with, I wanted them to understand that I know I’ve messed up before but I’m not always gonna be that person and I’ve changed and she made it possible to really convey that. The emotion she gave off in response to what myself and Poynte was doing complimented it really well. At the last minute, there were some last minute change ups that bothered me as a writer for someone to do that while we were in the studio. I was like “are you for real”? I was biting my nails through the chorus so I had to really think about that for a minute. It was a lot different from the first go round to when we finally went to the studio with it but it went extremely well and turned out for the better. It was awesome.
Metal Exiles: Who did the art work and how do you feel that it interprets what the album means?
Kenny: My idea when coming up with Discreet Enemy was that I wanted it to be like a wolf in sheep’s clothing but I didn’t want it to be direct like that. I didn’t want it to be an actual wolf with some sheep’s skin on its’ head, you know what I mean? I wanted it to also be drawn because I like records like those back in the day when bands like Iron Maiden made vinyl and you got the art inside it and it was drawn and it looked cool. I wanted to do that because I really miss that about cover art now. I think it gives another artist out there a chance to participate and all. I don’t really know the artist that did it, but Matt kind of knows the person. He asked if we trusted him with it, with this guy, so the guy sent over some ideas and we shot down some and picked some good ones, and then we came up with the girl and the guy in the mask. It’s really cool. The meaning of that will be unveiled in our video so that’s something to look forward to.
Metal Exiles: One More Day came out 4 years ago and when you look at that EP how do you feel the band has grown since then?
Kenny: Oh we’ve grown tremendously. For me, as a writer, I was talking to a friend of mine and he was saying that my writing ability from the EP to the full length has grown by leaps and bounds. I am really hard on myself about lyrics. I’m too back and forth about it. I write them down and they’re kind of sporadic. I keep like a journal. If you saw it, it would look crazy to you and you probably wouldn’t be able to make any sense out of it. Me and Matt are the core members of Poynte that have stuck through this crazy that has been happening. Jake came into the band originally as a bass player and now he’s stepped up as the guitar player. He was actually a guitar player in his previous band and he wanted to come in the band because he liked what we were doing so much that he was willing to play bass because that’s what we needed at the time. When we were getting ready for this tour with Trapt, our guitar player just couldn’t do touring but that’s what we want to do now. We want to tour. It helps build your fan base. The term that was used to me a lot when I was younger was “shit or get off the pot”, so that’s where we’re at. We are hitting the road and doing this for real because otherwise we are just sitting on the hamster wheel.
Metal Exiles: I know you’ve shared stages with some powerhouse bands in the past, have any of them been specifically influential for you?
Kenny: I can’t really say which bands have been specifically influential but the bands that I’ve played with have definitely helped me grow not just as an artist but to be adaptive to the scene because it’s not just about getting up there an acting crazy. You get to have those moments and all but there’s a lot of work behind it that people don’t see. You’re hungry. You’re tired. You haven’t bathed in a couple of days. It gets rough out there. It doesn’t matter if you’re on a tour bus. Those guys on the tour bus, people think it’s awesome but when there’s 12 people on that thing, it smells and it doesn’t matter what kind of tour bus it is. It can be a van, a sprinter bus, a minivan, the tour buses; it doesn’t matter. You pack 10 or 12 guys in there, man, it sucks. (Laughing) When you get off tour, you don’t want to see anybody for a while and then it all starts back over.
Metal Exiles: What band or bands would you like to see yourself on tour with?
Kenny: It’s hard for me to pick. I really enjoyed touring with The Sons of Texas on the Trapt tour. I would do that again all day long. Those guys are by far the most fun guys to be on the road with. I can’t speak anything but good things about that band. We converse with them all the time. They’re all just really good people. If I could play with a certain band; if I could pick one…and I know people are gonna wonder what the hell, but I would like to play with Papa Roach. Jacoby Shaddix is an insanely credible front man. He is really talented. Not just as a vocalist but as a performer. He just puts so much into it. I would also like to go on the road with Hellyeah. There are so many different bands I’d like to tour with, like Breaking Benjamin, but my personal favorite would be Alice in Chains would probably be the top, number one band. It’s the grunge that I grew up on; that 90’s grunge, so that would be the end all for me, yep, Alice in Chains.
Metal Exiles: You are looking at a GoFundMe to help with the new video and getting ready to tour. Do you feel that 2016 is the make or break year for Poynte considering the undertaking that a band is now?
Kenny: Yes! I think that this is definitely going to be the make or break moment, maybe not for the band, but definitely for some of the people that are in it. We’ve put a lot of work into it and some people like to change sometimes. That’s not a bad thing. I love change. It can be an incredibly good thing of course.
Metal Exiles: One last question. I know you’re still working on finalizing the tour, but do you have an idea of the tour dates and locations yet and will you be headlining?
Kenny: We start off in Georgia, and then we move to Tennessee. We’ll also go to Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and it ends in North Carolina. We won’t be headlining. I can’t remember the headliner and that is a bad thing. I should know who I am going to be on the road with but we will be on the road with Guns out at Sundown from Baltimore will be on tour with us. We met them on the Trapt tour. It’s really opened up some doors for us and I see nothing but positive things for Poynte so I am excited about it.
Interview with Kenny Hathorne of Poynte
By: Leslie Elder Rogers
Metal Exiles: Discreet Enemy has been out for a year and you are just now kicking a lot of things into high gear. What has transpired for you guys in the last year since it dropped?
Kenny: Well, since we released the album, not just positive feedback but a lot of doors have opened up, a lot of opportunities for the band to grow and gain a fan base. Before we were just kind of hitting it up in our region, the southeast region area and our hometown and now, since the release it’s been nothing but positive things for the band. Having an opportunity now to release another video for our self-titled album Discreet Enemy for the song “Take Control”, is very exciting. We are going to be touring in April; the whole month of April. Since we started touring with that album, it opened up the door for us to be able to tour again. We met people that said “hey, you wanna do this”, so like I said, it has just opened up a lot of new opportunities for the band. Musically too, being inspired on the road, when you’re with your band mates, locked up in a can for 30 days, you really get to know each other and you take all that in and then release it out onto paper and into the music so, it’s pretty cool.
Metal Exiles: Speaking of “Take Control”, I saw that you had finally chosen a director, are you able to elaborate on who you’ve chosen to direct the video yet?
Kenny: As of now, there are a couple of people we really want to work with but we can’t say for sure who until we have dotted all of the i’s and crossed all of the t’s. We’re trying to get all the stuff lined up and the thing is we have a lengthy time to get ready. We have until the end of March to get ready but realistically, when you set up for tour like this and for a release for a single and some other things, the time goes by so quickly so you feel like there isn’t enough time to do what we are about to do.
Metal Exiles: Me being from Macon, so close to Atlanta, I see that over the past few decades Atlanta has dropped some great bands on the rock scene and now you are taking your place as well. What is it about Atlanta and rock bands that just mesh well?
Kenny: I love Atlanta. It’s a cesspool for all kinds of music and there’s so much talent out here. It’s inspiring for me too, even just as listener. I think for the most part it’s just the southeast in general. Rock and roll has been around for a long time and we grew up listening to it. The kids that listen to it aren’t like a “clique” or anything, in fact, it’s more like a big brotherhood or family and we all like lifting each other up. That’s what I love about Atlanta.
Metal Exiles: It is breaking my heart that The Masquerade, one of the coolest venues in Atlanta to me, is closing. Other bands, like Attila, have already expressed their displeasure over it. What’s your thought on that?
Kenny: It’s tearing me up because I’ve played so many shows there. I’ve seen so many shows there and for that place not to be an active venue, that’s gonna be soul crushing for me. An Attila, yeah, this is their hometown too. It’s where they got started and they’ve played a lot of shows there. They used to actually be around the same area as me. I lived in Lawrenceville and they are from Lawrenceville and we all knew each other. I play a different style of music obviously but we all are in that same music scene. I guess we just have to enjoy it while it lasts. I’ve talked to people that work there and they said they don’t even know when exactly the closing date is. I guess it’s just it’s just going to be like “alright, we’re shutting it down” one day, and that’ll be it, like a surprise.
Metal Exiles: Discreet Enemy is a massive undertaking. What is a discreet enemy and how does it represent the album to you?
Kenny: To me, a discreet enemy is like a personal friend that you could trust with anything, that you could let your guard down with and then they just take advantage of that. I don’t know what it means for everyone else, but I kind of use it as a tool. For example, at the time I wrote “Take Control”, I was going through a very political time in my life and it was like people just like to say which way to go all the time and which things are best for you and such. I mean why not ask people what they really want and don’t just force feed stuff down their throat. So that was my first political touch. I’d never really done that before and that’s kind of the story behind “Take Control”. Something personal happened to me and it inspired the ability to create the song and I then refined it into what it was in the end result.
Metal Exiles: The prelude-intro into Discreet Enemy is comprised of a series of numbers, is that some type of code or meaning behind it?
Kenny: It is a code. We didn’t just put random numbers. It was thought out and we want people to figure it out. There’s a pattern on the album art and if you look it, there’s a code that has the numbers and letters and it can help you spell it out. If you figure it out, we will give you something. We put a lot of work into this album. We pretty much made it ourselves. We produced it ourselves. We made our first music video ourselves. We made the tracks. We bought the cameras. We got the lights. I mean, we did it all. We got the place and made it work. We did all the editing. Now we actually have an opportunity to work with someone and we can put it in their hands to give us their ideas and help with executing it. The ideas they’ve come up with are amazing. I’m really excited about it. We’ve got some surprises. We are going to release a couple of new singles just to give people something new to listen to because we’ve been working on other music. We sat on Discreet Enemy for like you said, about a year, so we’re kind of ready and anxious to play something new.
Metal Exiles: The album flows through a lot of emotions from “Take Control” to “Erase Me”, “In My Head”, and of course, one of my favorites “Picture Frames”. I think they’re all great. What did it take to get all of this out of you guys and onto tape?
Kenny: “Picture Frames” is one of my personal favorites as well. When we first were writing the songs and coming up with the album, I’d already written a couple of songs lyrically, and they just crafted the music around the lyrics. A lot of the songs have real meaning. They’re not just stuff I made up. I mean, I embellish what happens but there’s truth to the story too. In “Nursery Crimes”, that story is real. It happened to a little girl in my area and when I heard the story from a friend who knew the owner of the home personally, I wrote the lyrics. Years later, that song just surfaced. I wanted to put it out there.
Metal Exiles: “Nursery Crimes” is dark and I know that it is a true story, but how did it create desire in you to write and sing about it?
Kenny: I worked with a friend that would come and pick me up to go to work every day and one day he just had this sick look on his face. He was completely pale. I asked what was up with him. He said that the guy he roomed with owned a duplex type home and was renting it out and the tenant was smelling an odor so his roommate sent a cleaning crew out there to clean the place. Then the tenant called again a couple of weeks later and said the smell was back. She’d been living there for nearly a year at this time. His roommate went out there with the cleaning crew the second time and they went over everything but couldn’t find the problem. Just out of curiosity, he went into the attic and saw the little 4 year old little girl’s body wrapped up, deceased and she’d apparently been there over a year. So I heard that story and it literally just poured out of me. I got to work. I was going to do these printing presses and I started to do that job but couldn’t stop thinking about this little girl so I grabbed a piece of paper and the lyrics just poured out. I came up with a scenario that wasn’t real. I just manifested this thought in my head that had happened so I went through multiple scenarios like a teacher noticing that the kid hadn’t been to school in quite some time and then moving to police officers telling neighbors to calm down, vaguely giving the story. Then moving onto a lawyer and then to the judge. It just all came together. It turned out really well. To make it happen, I just hummed this melody over and over and then the lyrics just came out with it. It was pretty wild. I could not believe that when I addressed the idea and what I’d come up with to Matt, it was kind of an acoustic song that I’d made with another friend, John, who played the guitar with me, but Matt blew me away with what he said he could do. It really pushed me to add so much emotion into the melody and the lyrics. He did the lyrics the way they deserved. I wanted it to be more of a story than just a regular song. As you can tell, it’s just a really long verse into a chorus. It doesn’t really do the typical verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge set up. I wanted to be straight forward and cut throat to the father that did it because in the real story, it turned out that her own father had strangled her to death and put her in the attic and fled. He was convicted but the sad part is, I found out the other day that he has already been released from prison. It’s pretty crazy.
Metal Exiles: One of the bigger stand outs is “Coping”. Where did this come from?
Kenny: I’m not going to mention any names or say exactly what happened because people in my home town will know exactly what I’m talking about but a person that had promised certain things to me and my band mates…and I’m not asking for handouts, because that’s not what happened or what we had intentions for. We just wanted some doors to be opened and she or he had promised they could deliver if we put in so much money and effort. So we put in all the work and saw nothing for a long time and when we talked about what needed to be done and where the money was going, we were told it was the cost of doing business. I just couldn’t take that. The cost of doing business with you? I’m already giving you 20% of what I’m making and giving you an additional off of my merch which you don’t even purchase. So, I was giving out a lot but nothing was coming back to me for quite some time. So in my mind, when I heard it was the cost of doing business, in my mind I heard “bleeding is coping”. I was like wow, so I wrote a song about it. I know it’s crazy and cut throat sounding “We write the lines you get behind, claiming your push is golden. What we make you try and take, leaving my insides stolen”. That’s how I honestly felt when that’s what I was told that because I really had nothing to give. We were and are still a growing band and for someone to take that much from you was just devastating. We had no problem with putting forth the work and effort and being a driving band because that’s exactly who we are with backing or not. We’re gonna continue to do what we’re doing. I personally am not going to stop. Anyway, that’s pretty much how that song came about. I was able to vent through music without putting some bad taste in everyone’s mouth by trash talking someone. I just put it out on paper. I still cordially see this person and I am very polite and I don’t harvest any bad feelings for the person at all. It was just at that moment in time when their business etiquette was much different than mine.
Metal Exiles: I don’t mean to dissect so many songs, but “The Villain” and the beauty behind the song and its sound gets to me. When you wrote it, did you originally write it to include a female backing vocalist?
Kenny: I did not write it for that to happen. I just wrote the song itself and then I had this call and response idea but when we put it out ourselves, it was just myself doing it and there was this echo thing. I thought it was ok but it wasn’t really doing what I wanted it to do. So Jake said he knew this girl that is an amazing vocalist and that it would be a cool concept since the song it about wanting someone to believe in you no matter what mistakes you’ve made before because having someone there supporting you is the best thing that could happen. When someone disbelieves, it’s just setting them up for failure so that’s kind of what I wanted to put behind the song; just because you’ve made mistakes doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Sami is amazing. When I first met her, I had no idea what to expect from a female vocalist because I’ve never really worked with one personally. I know there’s a lot of female rock vocalists out there and all but I didn’t know what to expect and she walked in and I didn’t really expect much but she just blew me out of the water. It really made the song for me. It made me sound better. I told her that she made me sound awesome and I don’t like the sound of my voice. People don’t understand why. When they have to listen to the playback, I don’t listen to my own music because it creeps me out to hear my own voice. With that song, I felt when I wrote the lyrics, I wanted someone to believe in me. I mean, the person that I’m with, I wanted them to understand that I know I’ve messed up before but I’m not always gonna be that person and I’ve changed and she made it possible to really convey that. The emotion she gave off in response to what myself and Poynte was doing complimented it really well. At the last minute, there were some last minute change ups that bothered me as a writer for someone to do that while we were in the studio. I was like “are you for real”? I was biting my nails through the chorus so I had to really think about that for a minute. It was a lot different from the first go round to when we finally went to the studio with it but it went extremely well and turned out for the better. It was awesome.
Metal Exiles: Who did the art work and how do you feel that it interprets what the album means?
Kenny: My idea when coming up with Discreet Enemy was that I wanted it to be like a wolf in sheep’s clothing but I didn’t want it to be direct like that. I didn’t want it to be an actual wolf with some sheep’s skin on its’ head, you know what I mean? I wanted it to also be drawn because I like records like those back in the day when bands like Iron Maiden made vinyl and you got the art inside it and it was drawn and it looked cool. I wanted to do that because I really miss that about cover art now. I think it gives another artist out there a chance to participate and all. I don’t really know the artist that did it, but Matt kind of knows the person. He asked if we trusted him with it, with this guy, so the guy sent over some ideas and we shot down some and picked some good ones, and then we came up with the girl and the guy in the mask. It’s really cool. The meaning of that will be unveiled in our video so that’s something to look forward to.
Metal Exiles: One More Day came out 4 years ago and when you look at that EP how do you feel the band has grown since then?
Kenny: Oh we’ve grown tremendously. For me, as a writer, I was talking to a friend of mine and he was saying that my writing ability from the EP to the full length has grown by leaps and bounds. I am really hard on myself about lyrics. I’m too back and forth about it. I write them down and they’re kind of sporadic. I keep like a journal. If you saw it, it would look crazy to you and you probably wouldn’t be able to make any sense out of it. Me and Matt are the core members of Poynte that have stuck through this crazy that has been happening. Jake came into the band originally as a bass player and now he’s stepped up as the guitar player. He was actually a guitar player in his previous band and he wanted to come in the band because he liked what we were doing so much that he was willing to play bass because that’s what we needed at the time. When we were getting ready for this tour with Trapt, our guitar player just couldn’t do touring but that’s what we want to do now. We want to tour. It helps build your fan base. The term that was used to me a lot when I was younger was “shit or get off the pot”, so that’s where we’re at. We are hitting the road and doing this for real because otherwise we are just sitting on the hamster wheel.
Metal Exiles: I know you’ve shared stages with some powerhouse bands in the past, have any of them been specifically influential for you?
Kenny: I can’t really say which bands have been specifically influential but the bands that I’ve played with have definitely helped me grow not just as an artist but to be adaptive to the scene because it’s not just about getting up there an acting crazy. You get to have those moments and all but there’s a lot of work behind it that people don’t see. You’re hungry. You’re tired. You haven’t bathed in a couple of days. It gets rough out there. It doesn’t matter if you’re on a tour bus. Those guys on the tour bus, people think it’s awesome but when there’s 12 people on that thing, it smells and it doesn’t matter what kind of tour bus it is. It can be a van, a sprinter bus, a minivan, the tour buses; it doesn’t matter. You pack 10 or 12 guys in there, man, it sucks. (Laughing) When you get off tour, you don’t want to see anybody for a while and then it all starts back over.
Metal Exiles: What band or bands would you like to see yourself on tour with?
Kenny: It’s hard for me to pick. I really enjoyed touring with The Sons of Texas on the Trapt tour. I would do that again all day long. Those guys are by far the most fun guys to be on the road with. I can’t speak anything but good things about that band. We converse with them all the time. They’re all just really good people. If I could play with a certain band; if I could pick one…and I know people are gonna wonder what the hell, but I would like to play with Papa Roach. Jacoby Shaddix is an insanely credible front man. He is really talented. Not just as a vocalist but as a performer. He just puts so much into it. I would also like to go on the road with Hellyeah. There are so many different bands I’d like to tour with, like Breaking Benjamin, but my personal favorite would be Alice in Chains would probably be the top, number one band. It’s the grunge that I grew up on; that 90’s grunge, so that would be the end all for me, yep, Alice in Chains.
Metal Exiles: You are looking at a GoFundMe to help with the new video and getting ready to tour. Do you feel that 2016 is the make or break year for Poynte considering the undertaking that a band is now?
Kenny: Yes! I think that this is definitely going to be the make or break moment, maybe not for the band, but definitely for some of the people that are in it. We’ve put a lot of work into it and some people like to change sometimes. That’s not a bad thing. I love change. It can be an incredibly good thing of course.
Metal Exiles: One last question. I know you’re still working on finalizing the tour, but do you have an idea of the tour dates and locations yet and will you be headlining?
Kenny: We start off in Georgia, and then we move to Tennessee. We’ll also go to Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and it ends in North Carolina. We won’t be headlining. I can’t remember the headliner and that is a bad thing. I should know who I am going to be on the road with but we will be on the road with Guns out at Sundown from Baltimore will be on tour with us. We met them on the Trapt tour. It’s really opened up some doors for us and I see nothing but positive things for Poynte so I am excited about it.
- Band website: http://www.poynte.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Poynte
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/poynte
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PoynteVideo/videos
- Hold On Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEAB55ou6wI
- Take Control Lyric Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luA-0M1pLKw