reinterviews-blog

[reinterviews-blog]

Howdy ho.

Today, thepittsburghscene posted the first article in a series I'm writing about graduating high schoolers in the music scene.

The first is about Nicole Pompei. Check it out! Feedback is much appreciated!

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hey, you should interview my friends band! they are called To Paint The Sky!

If you could send me a link to their website/facebook, that would be excellent! I'll give them a listen and see what I can do. (: 

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Oh hey

School has consumed my life. I'll be writing on here very soon! In the meantime, tune in to CalU's radio broadcast tonight to hear an interview with my band, Shirts Vs. Skins. We'll be playing several acoustic songs too.

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where's bob's interview at?

It is not due yet, I will turn it in when bossman gives me a deadline! 

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Howdy!

My interview is up on The Pittsburgh Scene, check out Color Me Blind! 

They're a sick alternative/hardcore band straight outta Pittsburgh, and you should check out their EP, ASAP. 

Find it here:

http://colormeblindrock.bandcamp.com/

Find the interview here: 

http://www.thepittsburghscene.com/NewsReader.aspx?newsid=74494c91-99e6-4ad1-bffc-9f5d00d2dc8e

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Tomorrow...

I will be interviewing Bob Pokrzywa, a talented local young adult who has a huge heart and mad chops. His music is absolutely beautiful, and I urge you to give it a listen!

You can check out his music here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bob-Pokrzywa-Music/144707875618318?sk=app_178091127385

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If you haven't yet...

Check out my interviews with Junior of Set Your Goals and Matt Brasch of The Wonder Years from Warped Tour this year. 

Let me know what you think, and leave suggestions of people you'd like to see interviewed during this year's fall tours. 

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Yo!

My second interview from Warped Tour is up! Http://reinterviews.tumblr.com It is was Audelio Flores jr. of Set Your Goals. It's longer, but he was very honest, and he gave interesting responses. Check it!

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Getting Warped with Junior of Set Your Goals

How is Warped Tour so far?

It's actually been great! I think I say this on every interview, but we all came in with a negative outlook on it, just cus it's very different from the past years, but I think just the vibe in general, all the bands are very laid back, whether they're your style or not. They're just nice people, and they are here just to play and have a good time. I think that's what makes it fun for us, there's no egos. 

What's the best part of being on Warped Tour? The advantage, you could say.

You get to play to a lot of different kids that you would never play to on a regular tour. A lot of the times, kids just go to a tour of a genre of their liking, and here you have a wide variety of kids. Some may like it, some may not, but you're always playing to a few thousand kids. 

So what are your favorite bands to watch?

The Acacia Strain, just cus they're heavy as hell, and like, kids beat the crap out of each other. (laughs) Winds of Plague is always awesome, Sharks, I really like that band. They're a really, really good band. Less Than Jake is always fun to watch, Against Me!, 3Oh!3, Gym Class just hopped on, they always put a good show on. 

I'm a little surprised, 3Oh!3? I like them a lot, but I know some don't.

No, no, we were with them in 2008, and it was just them with a, just playing their tracks like on an iPod, or whatever, and this year they have a full band. I hadn't seen them since then, we played England, the same festivals together. That's when I first saw them with a full live band. It makes it more interesting. It was awesome, I thought it was great.

Do you have any crazy tales so far from Warped '11?

Compared to last year...because last year was pretty wild. This year we haven't had anything too crazy, we've just been doing a lot of casino runs, a lot of water parks. We went to like, the sketchiest water park in El Paso on a day off, and everything, it just looked like it was falling apart, patchwork on everything, but it was fun. I think last year we had more friends, like we had Four Year, Every Time I Die, Polar Bear Club, The Swellers, so we would always be together and we would always kinda do something retarded. This year it's kind of been just us. We have a few friends, but we've been doing it for awhile, so everyone just kinda hangs out. Works out, prison style, I guess. (Laughs)

Anyone getting their smoothie on?

We always get our smoothie on! That's our number one thing. (Laughs) We literally live for smoothies, like any time we're able to? Milkshakes, that's all we get. It's hard to get them on Warped Tour, I'm not trying to pay eight bucks. 

What's you favorite song to play live?

Favorite song to play live? It's gotta be Gaia Bleeds. You know, just because it's very energetic, kinda angry. That, and I like playing the new songs, because it's fresh for us. Yeah, it's Gaia Bleeds, we kinda swap, Jordan and I, and I do my part, and we go back forth. 

Is that when you get the best crowd reaction too, does Gaia Bleeds round up the crowd?

I think it gets crazier with that song, cus it's more aggressive, all the rest of the songs kids are jumping around, singing along, and push moshing, circle pitting and whatever, you know? I think that ones the most aggressive one, so either kids beat each other up, which I hope they don't do that, but sometimes they just get too into it. 

So, what has been the crowd's reaction to your new songs, people who maybe haven't picked up the record yet?

Well we're only playing two songs. We're playing Exit Summer, which is kind of a faster one, and there has been good circle pits for that, along with people singing along, and then Certain, which is a single we did a video for. Kids are jumping, and as long as we're able to see the kids jump around and sing the song, and when it's a quiet part and it's only vocals, you can hear them singing, that's when I think we've done our job. I don't really care too much whether they're beating each other up. That kinda bums me out when they do that, so I'd rather have them sing along then beat each other up. 

How have your long time fans reacted to this latest record?

Some of our die hard fans are stoked, and I feel like a lot of our die hard fans will support us with whatever we do. Some of the like, elitist kids, I guess, they just want us to write Mutiny!, like every single time. We're not gonna do that, simply because that was six, seven years ago. We were just doing whatever came naturally, and we're still doing that, but, I don't know. They always wanna hear Mutiny over and over and over, and we're not gonna do that. We're gonna progress as we go, and I think with this record, we just felt like we wanted to focus more on vocal melodies and bigger choruses, than "Oh, let's add a breakdown here, and let's add some chugga-chuggas." We wanted to work more on songwriting than anything. I mean, it's had a good response. People like it, people hate it, but we're selling records, kids give us a lot of good feedback on our Facebook and Twitter, so that makes us feel good. 

If you could make a dream tour of your favorite bands, who would it be?

I think our dream tours have always been going on tour with our friends. Fireworks is always a fun time, we got arrested with them. That's why in that part of Summer Jam, there's the line about getting our smoothie on. Four Year, Polar Bear Club too. I think if we could just get a different type of line up, I would really like to tour with Blink 182, just cus I think it's one of those things. Everyone out there loves Blink. I'm twenty-seven, and I grew up listening to them, and I'm stoked that they're releasing a new record. My favorite band is Pearl Jam, I mean I don't think that'd ever happen, but that'd be great. 

I watch the DVD of their Madison Square Garden performance with my dad a lot.

Oh it's the best! It was the first concert I ever went to, when I was like eleven or twelve, on the Vitalogy Tour, I went and saw that. Ever since then when they've come around to LA I've always seen them. 

What would you say is in the bands near future, or in the next few years?

I mean, hopefully we'll be doing the same thing, I mean, every band wants to get bigger, progress, and make it more of a career. I think that's what we're trying to do. We want our record, our music to reach a bigger audience, obviously without compromising what we're about. Hopefully we're able to do that with this record, and just keep writing new stuff. We're already kinda working on new songs, just because I think everyone in the band is in very high spirits now. We've gone through a lot of ups and downs, and now with this record and just the way things are going, everyone's super excited, and we've just been writing. Hopefully we'll release some stuff in December for fun. As long as we're able to keep touring and have fun, we're gonna keep doing it. The minute we stop having fun we'll probably call it quits. There's no point in beating a dead horse, like "Oh, we have to tour." I don't want to get to the point where we HAVE to do anything. 

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Getting Warped with Matt Brasch

You've talked about the pigeon before in previous interviews. What does the pigeon mean to you now?

Well, the pigeon kinda symbolizes how we grew up as a band. Nobody wants a pigeon around. It's kind of like, the animal that thrives on its own, doesn't care about anything else and finds a way to make it work. That's how we grew up, like nobody wanted to put us on shows, nobody wanted to do anything for us, bring us on a tour, so we were just like "Fuck it, we'll do it ourselves."

That's the way to do it! So, how has the band evolved since you started?

We started off as a joke band, actually. Our first record, Get Stoked On It!, is a complete joke. We never expected to be a real band. We just wanted to play a couple shows, hang with our friends, and play music. Then we went off to college, and we really missed playing, so we kept it going. We came home, did weekend tours, and then we all graduated college, and we were like "You know what? Let's try and do this." That's when we wrote The Upsides, and we started touring full time on that. We've pretty much been touring ever since. It's been almost two and a half years now. 

What has been your favorite tour so far?

This is gonna sound super cliche, but so far, The Warped Tour has been my favorite tour. I've met so many amazing people, and I get to walk around everyday and it's like I get to go to a free concert and see all these awesome bands. It's a good time. It's a lot of hard work, but it's a good time as well. 

If you could pick one deceased famous person to bring back so you could see them perform, who would it be?

Wow, I gotta think about this one...you know, it would be really cool to see Elvis. It would be awesome to see Elvis. I don't know why I said it, but I think it would be awesome. 

What advice can you offer to people who are just starting off in the music world?

Basically, make sure you do everything for the right reasons, you know? You don't want start a band to get famous or do this, or do that. Start a band because you want to play music and you genuinely enjoy it. When you start off touring, you don't want to route a whole month long US tour, you wanna start small, play shows on the weekends in the tri-state area and branch out from there. It's all about taking small steps and just gradually working your way up. Just try to push your music as hard as you can, believe in yourself, and like I said, do everything for the right reasons. It's easy to fall into, having the whole money thing in mind, but that's how bands break up. You start doing things for the wrong reasons and it's not enjoyable anymore.

What would you put in a tour care package?

Tons of water! Tons of water, case of beer, extra underwear, stage towels, snacks, gotta love the snacks. 

Favorite snack? 

Chex Mix, traditional. I'm trying to think, what would you put in a tour care package? (to friend off side, who answers, "Baby wipes") Yes! Baby wipes. Gotta get those gross showers going on. 

The keys continue to be part of your music, but that was missing for awhile. Why the shift?

Basically what happened, after we wrote The Upsides, Kennedy quit, our drummer, and we had Nick, who plays keys and guitar now, play drums. Then Kennedy decided he wanted to come back, so we had Nick play keys and guitar, that way we could all kinda find a way to be happy and fit everyone in still. We didn't want to kick anybody out, and we wanted Kennedy to come back, so basically the keys were just kinda there because we didn't know how to change our sound, or what we should do to kind of have Nick have another role. At first we were like "Three guitar players? I don't know if that's gonna work," but for the new record, Nick mainly plays guitar on it. He only plays keys on four songs.

Where do you think the band will be in five years?

Hopefully still playing. It's really hard to say, because a lot happens within a year. Five years is a really long time from now. Yeah, I hope we're still playing music, hope we're still touring, writing music, making records, hopefully it will keep going on the up and up, but who knows. If not, I'm sure we'll still be playing music and having fun. 

You have a ton of potential, you have a lot of devoted fans.

I mean, I hope things go well, like I said. It's a very stressful lifestyle, it's a lot of fun at the same time, but a lot can happen in a year. 

My final question...Is Mike Kennedy really a bad friend? 

No, (laughs) he's a great friend. 

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Hey Guys!

I'm a 16 year old writer and musician, and I work for thepittsburghscene.com, a great place to find Pittsburgh artists and download their music along with finding show previews and articles on local music. I also love to write about music on a bigger scale, so I made this blog to post all my music reviews and interviews. 

The first two interviews I'll be posting are with Audelio Flores of Set Your Goals and Matt Brasch of The Wonder Years. I will be interviewing them tomorrow on the Pittsburgh stop of the Vans Warped Tour. 

Stay posted!