In the span of just a few years, New Orleans, Louisiana metal band Cane Hill have gone from relatively unknown tour openers, to now touring with Sevendust. In addition, they embarked on their first major headlining tour earlier this year. They released their debut full-length studio album, ‘Smile’, on July 15, 2016. On January 19, 2018, their sophomore album ‘Too Far Gone’, was released, again via Rise Records. ‘Too Far Gone’ reached number 1 on Billboards Heatseakers Chart. Frontman Elijah Witt was kind enough to answer some questions about Cane Hill’s rituals before they go on stage, their biggest influences, and the music they’re listening to lately.
Who are your biggest influences?
“That’s become such a difficult question. It ranges from FIGHT & Pantera to Alice In Chains to James Brown, The Weeknd, & Olivver The Kid. We’re all over the place but that’s what helps us get so much weird shit out of our heads.”
You guys doing any festivals or headline shows next year?
“Yeah. We’ve announced a few EU festivals already and we’ve got some more to announce. There will probably be some sort of tour in there.”
What influenced your new EP?
“Listening to Jar of Flies and the unPLUGGED grunge era was a big one. But also a lot of pop and R&B went into it.”
Who are you guys listening to at the moment?
“Dern Kala, Fight, James brown, Chuck Brown, Olivver The Kid, Pantera, and Alice In Chains ALWAYS.”
What is your writing process like for an album/EP?
“Very all over the place. Everyone takes parts putting things into the songs. They all just kind of appear and morph out of nowhere. We’re pretty slow at writing in my opinion. It’s always a drawn out process to get exactly what we all want but it makes it much fucking better that everyone is putting in their piece to make it as much of a mold of everyone’s brains as possible.”
Where did the band’s name originate?
“Cane Hill mental asylum in the UK.”
Would you guys consider doing a feature film in the future, considering your music videos are pretty creative?
“Boy oh boy that would be cool. Actually just read about a band who made a full length music video that spans their entire album and I’d love to do that. It just would have to be exactly right. When you try to go that far out of your normal realm the product has to be so good it’s mind blowing or it doesn’t matter.”
What’s your favourite clothing brand?
“We wear a lot of vans & doc martens. Rude jeans cause they stay fuckin black. ASOS has the beanies though. Otherwise it’s vintage band or smoke related t shirts to be honest.”
What’s the most embarrassing thing that has happened on tour?
“Nothing. We are so cool. Everything we do is cool and not embarrassing. Toooootally.”
Do you have any rituals before you go on stage?
“We listen to most of the War of Words album by Fight to get us fuckin pumped and then do some warm ups together, essentially just screaming at each other for fifteen minutes. Then we rip a heavy gig.”
The band’s new EP, Kill The Sun, drops in January via Rise Records.
You can check out Kill The Sun when it drops on January 18th 2019, preorders are available from here.
