Ash: Speaking of working with other musicians, I was reading somewhere that you might be doing a special show with Fucked Up?

WK: Yeah! That’s coming up soon.

Ash: Did they ask you to play, or did you ask them?

WK: I don’t think I’ve met them in person. I’m friends with the folks that run their record label and I guess just somehow or another…I can’t even remember how they got in touch with me. Oh, I got an e-mail from their label saying ‘hey would you ever wanna play with Fucked Up…etc.’ and I was like ‘sure’. This is an amazing, exciting band and they’re as passionate as a band could be, but I wasn’t that familiar with them beyond that. Then they actually wrote to me and said would you like to play keyboards IN our band. I thought they just meant we’d play shows together! But they wanted me to be in their band.

Ash: Full time?

WK: Well, they said yeah. And tour with us. It just sounded so absurd and ridiculous; I just had to say yes, of course. And then I got the album, the most recent one (The Chemistry of Common Life) and started to listen to the songs and there is definitely some keyboard presence there. It’s going to challenge me; it’s definitely going to be a new kind of experience. I’ve never played keyboards in another rock band, especially a rock band as full blown as they are. It’s really passionate delivery.

Ash: I saw Fucked Up last year at Reading Festival and it was just really, really intense.

WK: There’s a joyful feeling there. I was a little intimidated at first because they were kind of almost violent, and their intensity could almost be scary but they’ve been so sweet and so kind and I’m just really honoured to get the opportunity. So we’re gonna rehearse in November for a day or two and then play the show, and we’ll see what happens. The cool thing too is that we’re playing at the Masonic Temple in Brooklyn, which is one of the main Masonic Temples in New York, so that will hold a lot of weight and significance just in the atmosphere of being in a Masonic Temple.

Ash: So is this just a one time thing?

WK: I have to prove myself. To me, and to them. So if I pull it off, hopefully I can play again.

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