Q&A with Cobra Starship's Alex Suarez

Sometimes you just can’t fit all the interesting tidbits that come up in an interview into a feature story. Rather than leave them on the cutting room floor, here’s some of the other topics Fender News covered with Cobra Starship bassist Alex Suarez.

Alex Suarez (red plaid) goofs off with the rest of Cobra Starship.  Photo Credit: Matthew Salacuse

FN: What’s a typical day like when you guys are on tour?
AS: A day in the life on our last tour was wake up at like one o’clock, put myself together as quick as possible and then we usually had press stuff. We went to a bunch of radio stations on the last tour because our songs have been doing so well, so that was really fun. We did that usually until 3 p.m. and then had sound check at 3:30, usually done by 4 p.m., and then typically have a meet and greet right after. We also did a bunch of contests with radio stations where the winners came to challenge us in Mario Kart. We usually did that from like 5 to 6, and then we played at 9 p.m.  We usually hang out and party after our shows so I wasn’t going to bed until around 4 a.m.

FN: Who do you choose as your character in Mario Kart?
AS: Oh, well I’m old-school Nintendo® so I’ve stuck with my guys: Mario and Toad are my dudes, except for Game Cube Double Dash where you can use two characters. I use Baby Bowser and Toad, because I like the little baby character; it’s pretty sweet, I’m not going to lie.

FN: Who usually wins?
AS: We do! We are all really good at them, like insanely good. It’s weird. Halo, Call of Duty and Mario Kart are the main games.

FN: What’s something you never leave home without?
AS: Oh okay, this might be kind of weird, but I literally take a 7-inch fan and tape it to the top of the bunk above me so that it points right at my face because I can’t sleep without it. It goes everywhere with me. When we are overseas in Japan or Australia, we don’t have a tour bus so we stay in hotels, and if I don’t have this thing I won’t be able to sleep. I’ve got to have the sound of the fan and the breeze flowing over me!

FN: Any other unique things you’d care to share?
AS: A long time ago I went to go see the Bride of Chucky at the movies and I had to walk out. I couldn’t do it. And that one is not even scary. It’s the talking dolls though because after I saw Child’s Play, we had this house that I lived in for like six years in Florida that had plank stairs, like open back stairs, and I literally had to run up them every single time because I was afraid of something just grabbing my ankles. Seriously, for like six years I ran up the stairs every single time. I casually made it seem like I was just skipping up them so that no one would know, but I was really running for dear life.

FN: I have to ask about your Cobra Cam TV episodes. They are hysterical and very creative. Who came up with all of the scripts? 
AS: A good friend of ours, Jack the camera guy, does all of the filming and all of the editing. He came out on tour with us and then stayed with us in New York and we filmed all of those in like seven weeks. He’s like a little baby genius; he’s really creative and really talented. We brainstormed with him, and then (guitarist) Ryland Blackinton did a lot of the writing with him also. We just tried to come up with really funny, crazy scenarios and ideas. We tried to mix it up a lot every week.

FN: It seems like in some of the episodes that you have a really hard time keeping a straight face?
AS: Oh my god, it is really hard, especially when we are in costume with those fake mustaches and everything. It gets really intense.

FN: In one of the episodes you get your very own cooking segment. I read that you used to have your own catering business? 
AS: There were three of us involved in that. It was called Thyme to Dine.  It was doing insanely well. Unfortunately it was very short-lived, only 10 or 11 months before things went south with one of our partners. I guess there’s a sour apple in every group, or there can be. I don’t know what the (heck) that phrase is. We started having problems with this guy and it kept building and building, but we had this awesome opportunity to meet with the largest wine distributor in Florida. This guy was willing to hook us up with this wine bar and let us do the food since we did wine dinners as our main specialty. So he sets up this huge lunch for us. I’m talking like 80 different kinds of wine to try over lunch, catered by this amazing chef. It was such a cool thing to go to, but our partner got trashed, which is really irresponsible. At a thing like this you can’t really get trashed and be unnoticed. The other guys we were going to do business with also got wasted; they were six or seven years older than us, and they started saying stuff about how young guys think they know everything. The guy in our group got insanely offended and almost got in a fistfight and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We were like, “You know what, you do sh*t like this all the time and make us look bad.”  He freaked out then and it ended right there.

FN: Is it true that you really worked as a butcher, and does that have anything to do with you being a vegetarian?
AS: Yes, and no. Yes I was an actual butcher, and no it has nothing to do with me being a vegetarian, although after I was a butcher, I swore I’d never eat ground beef again. Actually, I’ve got a funny story if you want?

FN: Of course. 
AS: Ok, so it’s my second day on the job right, at this Whole Foods store in Orlando. So there’s two ways you can do ground beef in supermarkets, either make it yourself or you buy it pre-made. Do you buy ground beef at the supermarket?

Photo Credit: Billy Siegle

FN: No, mostly I eat ground turkey, but I’m familiar with ground beef, yes. 
AS: Ok, so when you go and buy it, there’s different levels of fat content to choose from, depending on how healthy you want your burger to be. And there’s very strict laws on that and there’s different ways to measure how much fat is in your ground beef, but most people buy it pre-made and it comes in a tube and then you don’t have to worry about it, you just package it and sell it. Like a wholesale distributor sells you a big tube and you divvy it up and sell it by a couple of burgers. So my second day on the job, I’m at Whole Foods and I’m still learning about all of this crap, and it was the first day I made the ground beef too, which you have to do first thing every morning, not a pleasant thing to do by the way. My manager in charge of the meat department, you know how they have that little window that looks down on the store, he yells out, “Hey, I gotta run. I’ll be back.” So I’m doing my thing, and this guy comes in and tells me that he’s the health inspector and that he needs to see the ground beef to check the fat content because what a lot of people do is put more fat in it and stretch it out and sell more of it, which is disgusting. So he asks if we make our own and I tell him yes and that I had just made it. I got so scared though because he brings out this little device. Basically they take a little patty and they cook it and then they put the oil into a tube of water and see how much grease floats on top of the water. It’s so disgusting. Luckily, my second day making it, I made legal beef, my ratios were totally good, but my manager flipped out on me because I guess he was notorious for putting a lot of fat in his ground beef. But just imagine starting a job, and then the health inspector comes in; it’s terrifying.

FN: So what’s the best dish that you make?
AS: You know what I made for the first time ever and I was really impressed with how it came out, not to toot my own horn or anything, no for real though, I couldn’t believe it, but I made an insane vegetable curry with brown rice. I can cook meat all day, and I’m really educated on cooking fish, but now that I’m a vegetarian I’m really trying to learn to cook different stuff.  I don’t know a lot about cooking Indian food or Thai food, but I was like, “Oh my God, this is the best thing I have ever made.” The flavor was amazing, and so now it’s my favorite. I usually hate brown rice, but I had only had it at restaurants because it takes like an hour to cook. I finally took the time to make it myself and I did it like classical French rice and with the vegetable curry…now it’s my favorite dish to make.

I’ve also been told that I make amazing mash potatoes. When I used to eat meat, I’d put bacon in them, but you can put anything in there – goat cheese, all sorts of stuff.

FN: You need to get on Iron Chef or something.
AS: I did actually like a knockoff of Iron Chef on shockhound.com. It was me against one of the heads of this record label. They called it Battle Chef and we did Battle Chef pork and vegetarian pork. It was awesome. I won in case you are wondering.  I thought he had me for sure because he’s a really great cook. I’d love to do more competitions like that.

FN: I love to cook, but I like to take my time. I don’t think I’d do well being timed or having to race against someone. 
AS: I used to do contests like that in culinary school all the time. They called them mystery baskets because you don’t know what you are going to get when you go in there. You have two hours, and you have to make two dishes. The first one I did, the mystery ingredient was shrimp and I’m allergic to shrimp and I still came in second place which was cool. They were like, “You made this and didn’t even taste it?” I was like, “Yeah,” and they were like, “Oh my God, you are genius.” Ok, no they didn’t really say that exactly.

FN: Ok, I’ll say it. Alex, you are a genius! 
AS: Thanks.

FN: But seriously, Cobra Starship has had a ton of success this summer, cracking the top ten chart and the two MTV VMAs nominations. Has there been one particular “wow” moment for you?
AS: Yeah, I think performing on Conan. We were lucky enough to do it twice­­, and it’s like, “Holy sh*t, we are playing on Conan.” It’s pretty amazing.