Cold War Kids
There's a terrific recent record, the band's 10th studio album, which, oddly, is the first to be self-titled.
The title, Willett explains, is reflective of a rock band that's reached middle age. While two of the original members left years ago, Willett and bassist Matt Maust have been Cold War Kids throughout, and the current five Cold War Kids, who have been together for the past 10 years or so, continue to feel right, he says.
“I think the record in a way, even the reason for calling it selftitled, a lot of it was just being able to kind of embrace that renewal or full circle,” Willett says of an album that sounds as powerful and fresh as the band's 2006 debut, “Robbers & Cowards,” or 2014's “Hold My Home.”
“To be where we are now, and to be on this 20 Years Tour, it's really special,” Willett says. “We've had just a tremendous fortune.”
Making the band
In high school and junior college, Willett played guitar and listened to music obsessively, believing that somewhere over the horizon he'd find his rock 'n' roll life.
“I had almost a weird, almost ill-fated feeling about music,” he says. “I had friends in punk bands that went on tour and burned out very quickly. That was a very, very, very Orange County and Southern California type of thing that was happening around us.
“I had even been asked to join bands and I was always so reluctant to play with certain people because I just didn't feel like it was the right thing,” Willett says. “”My brother and my best friend growing up had this band, Death by Stereo, and they asked me to join. It was kind of more like a thrashy punk band. I was just like, that's not who I am.
“At the same time, it was so painful to let something pass by. I was like, maybe this is my only shot at ever doing music.”
Then Willett transferred to Biola University for the final two years of college, and suddenly, to his surprise, he found friends from which Cold War Kids would eventually emerge.
“I was going to this Christian college out in this weird little zone between Orange County and L.A.,” Willett says. “I thought, I'm gonna spend two years here and I'm not going to really meet anybody, and that will just be like a tiny footnote in my life.
“And, of course, the thing that happened there was this big group of friends, all these kind of artschool kids that I had never been exposed to before,” he says. “The range of music that they were listening was all this stuff that I had kind of known but didn't really have anybody that really openly celebrated, such obscure music like the Velvet Underground and Captain Beefheart to the Smiths and all this blues and gospel and punk.
“It was just like, oh, these are my people. It was a huge shock to me.”
Still, Willett was 24 and working toward a teaching credential before he, Maust, drummer Matt Aveiro and guitarist Jonnie Russell formed Cold War Kids in Russell's apartment above the Mulberry Street restaurant in downtown Fullerton.
“I was substitute teaching and it wasn't until I kind of hit the point where I was like, man, I don't want to do this at all,” Willett says. “`I don't want to do anything else other than, like, we just need to start a band.'”
Family lives
For most of the past decade, the Cold War Kids lineup has been stable. Drummer Joe Plummer
and multi-instrumentalist Matthew Schwartz became fulltime members with Willett and Maust around 2014. Guitarist David Quon completed the current lineup when he joined in 2016.
For Willett, changes in the band over time were necessary if not always easy.
“The changing of the lineup over the years has been some of the toughest transitions,” he says. “For me, becoming that kind of leader that makes those decisions about what's going to work and how it's going to work and keeping it all going has been some of the toughest things.
“You're in a place where business and friendship and art are all just deeply tied in a way that I haven't really seen in any other type of job I see anywhere else,” Willett says. “It's all in the blender.
“So now, the five of us, it's almost come full circle in that we have this incredible chemistry and great understanding and appreciation of each other.”
The band is a family with all the responsibilities and rights the term implies, Willett says.
“You can't have tension where you're against each other or an awkwardness where you can't talk about certain things,” he says. “You have to get those things out in the open. And at the same time, you know it's not perfect. You live with a degree of just understanding in the way that you're family.”
At 44, Willett also has a family outside of his work, a home life with his wife and three daughters ages 3 to 9.
“To have this life and that life, there's not a lot of people I can think of that I can go, oh, I like how that person is doing this thing of having a family and being an artist and it looks like something I really want.
“You know, you don't see VH1 `Behind the Music' and see a story of a really successful group that also has a really successful personal life and such a rich kindness, grace and love, and that's the end of the story,” Willett says, laughing. “How boring would that be? It just never goes that way. There is a reason.”
Same but different
“Cold War Kids,” the new album, reflects the maturity of a band, and in Willett, a songwriter who has worked to balance life and work.
The album opener, “Double Life,” finds him singing about gender roles in a family, a reflection of his understanding of the sacrifice his wife makes when he's on the road, and the work he wants to embrace when he's home with their children.
“Another Name,” one of Willett's
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