Surfer Blood Say Leave Your Karate Moves at Home

When Surfer Blood hit Toronto this week to perform at NXNE, sound techs working the festival should be advised that the Florida-based indie rockers don't want any monkey business. And by monkey business, they mean no 'Mortal Kombat' moves during their soundcheck.

"We toured with this band in the UK and they had this sound guy with them who was obviously super into martial arts," frontman John Paul Pitts tells Spinner. "The first day we were soundchecking he was standing in the middle of the room shadowboxing and doing all this karate stuff. When he started to do it on the second day, our tour manager went over and said, 'You can't do this UFC fighting stuff when the band is soundchecking, it's really distracting.'"

"Things didn't get much better after that," he adds. "He just made everyone on our crew super uncomfortable the whole tour. I have no idea where people like this come from -- we've definitely met some colorful people in our travels."

Which makes you wonder: could any of these wacky characters be immortalized in an upcoming Surfer Blood song? Possibly, but Pitts isn't ready to talk details.

"We have ideas floating around," he says, remaining tight-lipped about their new material. "The ideas that we are coming up with I'm really into though. I think it [the next disc] is going to be even better than 'Astro Coast.'"

Pitts and his young cohorts are also excited about working to use a professional studio this time around, as all their previous recordings were done on a bare-bones set up.

"The last album was recorded with a budget of, like, 200 dollars," the singer says. "It's going to be really interesting to see what we can do when we have the means to get into an actual studio."

The band is hoping to piggyback on the success of their 2009 debut and get even more people in their corner. Pitts jokes that they wouldn't even mind a few super-fans. "I think it's every musician's dream to have people that deeply into your music," he says.

"If there was a Surfer Blood cult everyone would have to wear clogs and track jackets as the uniform," he laughs, all too happy to fantasize about having a major following. "The people in our cult should be action-adventure extremists, too. They should be into bungee jumping and sky diving, and they should all have their own parachute."

Fans should take note if they want to get on Surfer Blood's good side: throwing yourself from a speeding plane will get high fives from the guys, but getting your 'Karate Kid' on during soundcheck on the other hand -- not so much.

Surfer Blood will play at Wrongbar, as well as a free concert at Yonge-Dundas Square -- both on Sat. June 19 -- as part of NXNE.