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Katastro talks touring with The Expendables and living in California

Katastro

Katastro will be playing a show on Sept. 12 at 8 p.m. in Tempe.


Tempe band Katastro has found their niche with rock 'n' roll crafted for rainy days and lounging on couches. Songs from their latest album “No Mud, No Lotus” balance storytelling and grooves that lay a soundtrack to your walk across campus during the fall season. 

Coming off touring with The Expendables, Katastro has a couple of local shows before the group hits the road with Pepper and Ballyhoo! for two months. 

Drummer Andrew Stravers took some time to chat about touring and the band's bright future.  

How has it been sharing the stage with bands like The Dirty Heads and The Expendables?

We’ve known The Dirty Heads for a while. The second show we played, we opened for them. It’s been crazy to see them grow and become so successful and seeing some really cool people explode. The Expendables were really cool too because we had never met them before and now we’re friends with them so it’s been great for us.

What’s your favorite thing about playing in Arizona?

I think for us it’s having our friends and family at the shows and it feeling more like a get-together and a party than a show.

For the last album you relocated to California. Is that permanent or was that just for the album?

We were living out in Orange County for two years and were writing stuff and some of that material did make it onto the album, but we decided to move back when we found out that we were going to be touring with The Dirty Heads. So we moved back to save some money. 

It was a lot of fun living there, but it was just time to move back and save up. It was also time for us to not live together 24/7 anymore because we already live together on tour and then coming back and living in the same space as the rest of the band... It’s just not healthy.

Who have you been listening to lately?

Chet Faker and Tame Impala. The Impala new album is absolutely fantastic.

You have been teasing new material already; can fans expect to hear new material at the shows?

Yeah. I think we have one or two songs that nobody has heard that will probably make the next release whatever we decide to do with that, but we definitely plan on playing a couple new songs on the tour with Pepper. 

We have about six or seven songs already being worked on and we have a bunch of ideas. We rented a studio in downtown Mesa where we’ve been writing and recording demo material there.

What's different in the music this time around from previous material?

There are elements of our old sound in the music we’ve been writing, but there are definitely elements of hip-hop in the newer stuff. There is definitely that rock sound still, but we’ve been messing around with new stuff like samples and merging a little bit of electronics. 

Definitely focusing on making bigger choruses and such too, but we haven’t been in the studio so we don’t know how much of it will make it to the final cut.

Is the process of writing now different from the past?

We used to write songs by jamming in a room together and basically doing it live before recording it, but this time we’ve been sitting down more and piecing it together and recording it as we go. It’s been an interesting process and it’s been a lot of fun. It’s a different sound.

Related links:

Katastro returns home for show in Tempe

Alabama Shakes' frontman kicks listeners in the face on solo debut 'Thunderbitch'


Reach the reporter at dloche@asu.edu or follow @DMLoche on Twitter.

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