Interview with Echoes of Harper's Ferry - Podcast 103

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with a new week and new interview so that's pretty consistent on our part this will be like three weeks in a row so i'm pretty stoked on that um after last week where we broke the news well didn't really break the news i guess if we posted the day we got the interview we would have broken the news about the swellers uh signing to a new label but due to the mysteries of internet delay we obviously didn't get it out before most of the people knew but after uh you know they're pretty well known at this point we're going with a little lesser known man but they're a great bunch of guys and a great great band they're called echoes of harper's ferry um i used to know where they were from but i've totally blanked on it anyhow they're a really really good band and i'm really stoked to have them on the show and we also have some stuff to give away for this show um if you listen to the end they're going to be giving away um their cd full length called never forget and their uh split ep with sleep horse i think it's yeah i want to say it's either sleep horse or sleeper horse but i'm not getting up to check it so either way but we're going to be giving that away and uh yeah it went pretty well they're really really good bunch of guys and i think if you listen to a lot of the music that we play on the show which i can't imagine why you would listen if you hated everything we played uh you're probably going to hear a lot more of these guys in the next coming years and you'll probably uh really want to get into them so check them out um we're going to start by playing one of the tracks off of their full length called uh never forget and it's on i want to say the lock and key collective so if i'm off on that i'm pretty close i'm within two words there's some lock there's some key and i think collectives in there but uh pretty sure it's locking key collective we're going to start by playing the track uh king dodongo and uh then we're going to jump into the interview and then we're going to get back into the music and then we're going to give away some shit so i know that's everyone's favorite part so uh you can skip ahead if you want but you're going to miss all the fun stuff so uh yeah enjoy the song enjoy the interview and we'll be right back

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fucking the name up okay all right outside of the works in san jose so i don't know if you guys want to go around introduce yourselves say who you are what you do in the band all that fun stuff i'm tim i play guitar and sing this is jeff i play guitar uh it's roscoe i play the bass and sing a little bit and i'm patrick i play drums awesome roscoe's also the sex symbol of the band how did did you was that an elected position or yeah we elected it was just fate he didn't run for it but you couldn't deny it at some point you're just like fuck it guess what you get so um i guess the easiest place to start you guys have a brief history of the band just kind of the general question the summary right um pat and i met in undergrad college in a small school around cleveland where we're from and uh we had a mutual friend we saw around each other like around school and stuff but i don't think we ever really talked pat's kind of a surly motherfucker i'm just kidding but uh you were like i don't want to fuck with that guy yeah no and uh so me and him just started playing together and we had this like kind of shitty kind of bass player who was just completely aloof and uh like i'm assuming he's not in the band he's not in the band anymore and now he's our current bass player yeah right no and then uh we just put our songs up on myspace and we met roscoe because he would be at shows and stuff and yeah we met him at a show and he wanted to play music with us and uh jeff was in another band from uh lawrence kansas that came through town and we played with them and fell in love and he wanted to move to cleveland and hang out and then so i am so wait people move to cleveland people do move to cleveland maybe about two a year wow it's worth it for those two it's it's a magical experience better than kansas not man yeah we just recently celebrated jeff's first year first year in ohio wow exciting yeah more exciting than kansas but i guess that's probably not saying i don't yeah i don't know much about kansas so other than the wizard of oz and i'm assuming that's not historically accurate maybe uh well john brown was from kansas or not from kansas but did a lot of cool shit in kansas like hatcheting hatcheting slave owners and uh basketball was invented kansas really and james naismith yeah that's about the only two cool things i wouldn't have guessed basketball is inventing kansas yeah learn something new every day they well yeah i do maybe not maybe other people are like that's common fucking knowledge yeah james naismith yeah awesome so anyhow sorry so you moved up and that's kind of where the band started as it is now we were a three-piece for a long time but i think at this stage in the game or uh jeff's been with us and played more shows with us than he didn't but in the beginning we did start out as a three-piece and jeff was moving up and we just we never actively looked for a guitar player yeah you know we're friends with them and he was moving in town so we're like hey this kind of works out you know and the same in the same way that you know roscoe is a sex symbol yeah it just kind of happened it just yeah it just happens so it's that natural you don't want to fight it yeah you just do it so uh i have your recordings the two ones that you guys have the split with sleeper horse and yeah your lp have they been with uh jeff or i'm not fucking your name okay actually both of them weren't okay we're not we just put two new songs up that i actually got to play guitar on yeah so those are the first recordings that you've actually got a part of yeah okay so before it's just been a three-piece now it's it has been and they've upped the ante a little bit that's for that's for damn sure nice so when you play live do you just stand there during this or you're just like i kind of just look at roscoe the whole time during the songs roscoe's bass just to like you know follow him along and it's a step above the guy that plays backup guitars for green day live isn't it time they just make that guy part of the band because it's super awkward to watch yeah what were they on the other day like the uh colbert report and that guy's up there and it's just kind of like what the fuck's the fourth guy with green day well they have a they have a fourth guy and then i thought i saw another guitar player yeah on top of it maybe i don't know they know there's there's five dudes who play well there's also like a guy who does that with rancid because tim doesn't play at all live like he has a guitar oh yeah it just fucking hangs there for like the entire he swings it around and like he's like a kid like playing along with rancid he's like i've yeah i've heard that about alkaline trio too that they have like a person backstage who like plays yeah behind the amps one day you guys will get that big yeah connor he's gonna be doing that connor's gonna be back there playing your guitar y'all are just gonna be up there i just i don't know i think that'd be awkward yeah it seems like it's just not like gen like real yeah you know you want to be in a band to play music not to pretend i don't know maybe you do maybe it's like just for the groupies and a lot of it is don't get me wrong yeah yeah and that's that's that's sure we're not talking about that all right i'm just kidding i heard nothing so uh back to talking about your guys music so you guys have the full length never forget right and uh a lot of people in american the american lexicon that's closely associated with 9 11 and all that and clearly from the context of your guys album that's not necessarily what it's about do you guys want to explain that or kind of go into that at all yeah i mean it's kind of just like you said it's become this uh tagline for post 9 11 you know whatever everything that goes along with that you can think of yeah never forget okay yeah sweet never forget well i think the message that we try to convey with that is kind of thinking about you know well why are people angry at us you know it's not because we have rock music it's not because you know we have our women are free i mean iraq you know iraq for example was the most secular regime in the middle east yeah and uh uh so it's just calling attention to the fact that you know we've committed so many atrocities on just countless countries that people just are i don't know if it's you know they're not taught in school or they're just unaware or they just justify it and think that you know there's this american exceptionalism that whatever we do is okay and then when it happens to us everybody freaks out but on a wide scale like yeah objectively looking at it it's just yeah okay what happened on 9 11 was like terrible that people died but it's a very common occurrence that we've you know perpetuated from the inception of the u.s itself yeah and and even was the country was even you know founded upon arguably genocide so i don't think i think there's a few indians that would not include arguably in that statement yeah but right right and uh yeah so it's just kind of flipping that around and just calling attention to the hypocrisy that but what about toby keith where would toby keith be without 9 11. i mean i seriously think these people yeah right right i i seriously think the same people that write that like write these country songs that toby keith sing are like the same people that like write the talking points for like oh you know what i mean for fox news and shit it's gotta be the it's the same kind of the same exact it's just one person yeah it's one guy sits in his cabin all day put a boot in your ass yeah yeah just that was keith the boot in your ass guy yeah and that was like one line away from being a bush speech the guy was like sitting there and he was like up late one night he's like fucked is this a country song or a speech that right that could have been the fucking state of the union 2001 exactly it was that close yeah it's the same exact message yeah it's a little terrifying but i mean yeah it's i don't know stunning on the upside well i shouldn't say on the upside because that they're not in the office anymore because fucking cheney's still all over tv which yeah that scares the god out of me they're saying that yeah there's never really this is like unprecedented situation that he you know yeah well because you couldn't fucking find the guy for eight years eight years he lived like underground in a series of tubes and shit and now all of a sudden that he's not in office he's all over fucking tv it's yeah terrifying i kind of preferred it when i didn't see him but anyway well you could always go hunting with him if you want yeah i'm dude he'd love to go hunt it with me i'd be hunts the world's most dangerous game man but uh so a lot you guys are i mean you're more than just a political band but obviously there are some political overtones and so it seems in punk music at least if you follow punk news.org which i do unfortunately i do a lot of no one wants to admit it but fucking i know everybody likes to shun it but every goddamn morning i see one of these assholes oh yeah checking it surfing it everybody does normally roscoe and connor fucking everybody does but anyhow so a lot of it seems a lot of political bands tend to get lumped into either like the anti-flag where it's the real like i don't want to say childish but it is childish like 14 year old like fuck the government fuck money right right or like the propaganda where it's like ridiculous ridiculously militant you live in the cabin in the woods and eat nothing but fucking corn and acorns and shit like where do you guys like see yourself falling in that and how do you kind of yeah how do you keep from you know falling in one of those either black and white type categories you got me no that's what i do we ask the heart see you weren't expecting the hard questions um i know what you're saying yeah about anti-flag and uh i guess i was talking about this the other day one thing that pisses me off more i shouldn't say more but almost just as much as somebody who supports bush as somebody who says fuck bush or fuck republicans but don't really have a sound basis for yeah you know holding those ideas and they're just kind of like regurgitating this like fat mike rock against bush bullshit yeah and uh and i guess on the other side propaganda i mean that band changed my life and they're like definitely the number one influence on me and i don't think i would be the person today without having heard that band yeah but sometimes yeah i know i know more so in the past they were very very militant yeah and uh i think they've kind of mellowed out a little bit with age yeah i think we just try to present ideas that are that are relevant to us you know whether it's whether it's dealing with drinking or commenting on american foreign policy and i think

by not trying to be overly pushy about it but also being getting specific and being smart and intelligent about it and like and not in a condescending fashion i guess is how i've always tried to approach it by writing the lyrics i can't you know it's hard to say when you have a choice between the anti-flag and propaganda oh yeah there's obviously bands in between but right right it seems to be that's where people are always like they're just like anti-flag or they're as bad as propaganda and it's like there's a lot of fucking gray area there but yeah no but totally yeah and i and if we fell somewhere i think it would definitely be more i would say it's definitely more propaganda yeah definitely more propaganda i mean we're not vegans we're vegetarians and we don't live in a cabin and eat corn i think yeah yeah yeah but roscoe loves corn apparently that's how he stays sexy but i mean we try to be you know we try to be consumer friendly we try to be you know not be detached from real world issues i mean like on tour i think one of you know one one enlightening experience we had you know was going to an indian reservation and just seeing the way that you know natives i guess live and i guess the point is like you know we did we just try to stay conscious and try to stay active and relevant and try to write our songs that are you know get specific so many bands see i say fuck the government fuck the police okay but why like why yeah you know so just trying to provide and present an idea get people to think and that's definitely more propaganda influenced yeah definitely i feel uh we're gonna take a break from the interview there just for a second to bring you guys some more music by echoes of harper's ferry then we're gonna go back to the interview and then we're gonna give some more stuff away so you guys don't have to listen to me for too long right right so uh we're gonna play the track japanese proverb off their full length never forget and then we're going to play some more interviews so uh be sure to listen to i don't know it's like the last eight minutes or so of my ramblings and uh to learn how to enter to win uh both their split seven inch and their full length cd and they're really like if you get the chance i'm not joking i'm going to do this again at the end but if you get the chance to really go see these guys they're really good live they're a lot of fun and the work ethic of these guys are really really dope uh all right so here's

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collective which is it's like their third or fourth album that they put out something like that i think it was their third yeah yeah third so how did you guys hook up with uh them dan rock um dem hem whoever dan rock used to actually work ironically for af records oh and uh wow

did not know that yeah yeah dan rock yeah he was a and i think um i didn't know they could have employees they uh like a lot of labels that have been started like toby from red scare i'm under the impression he used to work for a fat yeah he used to do fats um i want to say he was their web presence but i could be wrong on that and like uh somebody else started their own label didn't fat mike work for somebody too or something there's some somebody else though they they work for record labels and they start their own thing so yeah i don't want to sell dan out here but i think he he didn't really want to get the anti-flag stamp of approval for everything that passed his way yeah and i mean i don't give a shit a lot of those bands on af records all sound like anti-flag yeah you know so like a lot of the bands on fat sounded like no effects for a long time so yeah yeah and so like and he he was hooking up with bands like new mexican disaster squad and people like that and uh i think yeah he was just didn't want to get the stamp of approval anymore and uh so started this collective and uh it's from pittsburgh which isn't too far from uh i don't know from cleveland and uh we played a house show up there with sleeper horse and he just came out and was just like yeah i like you guys you know wanted to put it out yeah he's just like do you guys want to do something and we're like well what do you mean like we want to do a lot of things like uh he was like yeah do you guys want to like record something put out at full length because we we had already had like the seven inch going on and we're like yeah sure you know like why not and we like the whole idea behind the lock and key collective that you know he tries to create those cds like try to be uh eco-friendly with them yeah the collective is kind of like this like non-hierarchical kind of you know collective yeah so that's not where you guys were at all because like it was fairly new and it is you know it's fairly different from a lot of the way labels are run yeah in these days um like in terms of it helping us out and getting exposure and stuff yeah you know i hear a lot of bands talk about oh we're shopping our album around we want to shop our album around you know like i don't think we've ever been like a band like that like i think everything that's happened everything that we put out like have been people that just responded to it yeah and if somebody's like i mean i don't want to say moved but if somebody is that interested i mean yeah i don't really care and labels to a large degree i don't think matter that much yeah and i you know we i mean i'm not gonna speak well no i guess i can say i don't really think any of us have ever really had like these grandiose ideas about where this band is gonna go and you don't see yourself well music in the park next to third eye blind out here no no i mean that would be fine that would be fine i mean but uh no i don't know we just we just never i don't think ever expected anything and so when if somebody was like yeah we're willing to put this out and pay for that's just amazing to us that's as good as it gets for you guys yeah i mean i i don't know well dan's one of the nicest dudes you'll meet too yeah that seemed like he had his shit straight that's always important i mean if you get with people who really i mean the more and more i've talked to bands lately especially with the internet and as you know stuff becomes more readily available and you don't necessarily necessarily need a whole pr team right more and more people who are just like you know if the guy's really into the music and he's you know he or she is like super you know nice and cool to work with that seems to be the most important thing anymore yeah yeah and you yeah and you know punk news i think for one thing can be like hella deceiving because i've seen them push like a lot of bands i'm not gonna name any i'm not gonna name any i'll name one i'll name one i'll name one how about that dude there's you don't even have to name okay everyone knows who got pushed the hardest by that site for the last two years the right before i was not gonna go with right before oh but who are you gonna go with i was gonna gaslight anthem come on oh yeah they got a year and a half crammed down everyone's throat okay right before as well right before has got a lot of hard push but i mean i'm not saying it's the virginia thing yeah no right right exactly yeah and i'm not gonna say i'm not saying anything bad about that band but i think if you just look at punk news you're like wow this band's huge yeah then you go see them play yeah they they've never you guys have come to the west coast more than the right before really they haven't to my knowledge it's but not in the last two years at least they've never come out west really well they're not welcome their kind ain't welcome around i'd like to see him come out yeah i know i know certainly rather see them than a shit ton of the bands who come out here but yeah i mean they don't listen so it's cool i don't know my yeah i guess my point is though a lot of it's deceiving i think people aren't as long as they can get exposed one way another they can make up their mind if if the music sucks and like there's just no substance to it people can figure that out sometimes people jump on bands i get kind of confused like a lot of like this new fungway ripoff pop pop punk revival seriously like bands like you know like uh this has turned into the shit talking no it's all right all i can name the bands uh there's caleb lionheart caleb my heart uh four years strong four years dude four years strong for sure your goal set your goal fucking fireworks yeah to us that shit is huge anymore and i don't if you had told me at this time and age newfound glory would have any sort of credibility i would have called you a liar i know yeah they have done it at some some way shape or form yeah i think they've they've they're like symbolized this kind of like you know people are always want to like oh yeah i have a guilty pleasure whatever i think people this is like they're everybody's guilty pleasure sort of thing yeah but there are better bands that you could like and feel bad about i don't know like i've never owned an album by them so and then when i when i when i see all these bands that are like like you know it's like um dumb and dumber when those like kids played jeff danielsen yeah i didn't see it because the sequel the sequel yeah because i just i knew how goddamn annoying it would have been to see people acting like jim you know what i mean yeah ripping off those characters right and these bands are doing like the exact same thing it's like you're ripping off characters you know that weren't really that good to begin with right right i'll say it so like in case anyone comes back i'll be like no no that's a good analogy those guys yeah i like that one i'm gonna use that in the future right on right on but uh so back to uh you guys so maybe i can keep you keep any shit talking from occurring but uh you guys uh you've been keeping a blog or kind of a tour diary of this tour that you guys have been on so what's been kind of the most interesting experience you guys have had or you've been on tour i i don't know like different different things different things keep keep this keep yeah keep me out i my favorite experience was our day off in yellowstone park oh yeah yeah we just hung out all day saw some rare animals nice and we saw three separate bears really yeah that's gonna be kind of fucking like they were just like chilling out chilling yeah chilling straight up dude like the one dude the drummer in reverse the curse joey like got fucking like like 15 feet away from this bear oh my god and this dude weighs like 80 pounds you know i would not i'm not dude bears not to be with i dude that's what i i definitely did not want to see a bear at all but they were like they were like like they were preoccupied with their berries and things digging around and sniffing you know shit like that i didn't think about it till i got back to the car i was like wow i was really close to a bear that bear was fucking right yeah yeah we saw yeah we saw a bald eagle serious yeah we saw a bald eagle a spread eat no and uh that was not at yellowstone though but it did happen no and we saw a shit ton of bison which are like the coolest yeah creature yeah just walking on the road just walking right now holding up traffic like it fucking owns the road or something you know you're like come on yeah pick a lane it just and it would yeah we saw those and we saw moose yeah we did you sound a little underwhelmed by the moose jacket i mean and there was a moose well there was snow we had a fucking snowball fight in the middle of june seriously yeah you go way up on top oh with the high altitude it's just a complete like over stimulation of like uh sweet ass animals and then like geysers and like hot springs and then snow it was just like anything could have came before us it could have been a dragon in the road after we would not have been as awesome it wouldn't have phased us we would have just been like that's fine yeah we don't have any of that shit in san jose we have smog smog right nothing quite that impressive trolley in the middle yeah well you guys are going to uh what oakland tomorrow we're going to oakland yeah if there's anywhere that i feel is less impressive than san jose it's oakland so or bozeman montana i've never been to bozeman montana you haven't been unimpressed though you have not seen unimpressed until you've seen bozeman montana yeah it sounds magical it's not i picture lumberjacks it's like broke back mountain like like wait a minute what it's like it's like all those like assholes that were in oh okay not like dissed on fucking jake jill and all for like doing this shit yeah i was gonna say it's a bunch of repressed cowboys i'm like pretty much more or less much with you know oh i'm glad i haven't been there that's the one good thing we have gay pride parades and no one throws shit at them and fucking yells at them or tells them they're going to hell yeah it's kind of cool to do that that's awesome we're supposed to go to the castro district today i think we might go later yeah um castro is fucking the best part of that castro it's the cleanest part of fucking san francisco oh yeah it is ridiculous the streets are clean there's no graffiti it's fucking amazing i heard it's upscale though kind of pricey yeah a little bit a little bit it's definitely not well it's because they fucking kept it clean fucking gay people moved in the castro cleaned everything up they didn't let their neighborhood go to shit right right now it's the expensive place to live it's amazing though they clean everything up but you know no but we don't want to get married yeah they can't do anything god no they're human or uh animals so i'm distracted yeah i think we're playing in like five minutes all right well we're gonna let you guys go then okay um anything else you guys want to add before we wrap up here uh no just um yeah no thanks for checking us out yeah no problem sorry the van smells so bad no it's okay i've been in worse check out reverse the curse too they're also unlocking key yeah yeah you guys are splitting the set tonight yeah we gotta split the sets tonight someone fuck something up that someone is i think is me and uh i apologize but all right man well thank you guys so much for taking the time and uh hopefully you'll get to come back out here sometime soon rock on thank you man ride on dude all right uh that's all of it that's the whole interview with echoes of harper's ferry i hope you enjoyed it i hope you learned a little bit about them they're really super fun guys and they're a really good band um i realize i should have said this at the beginning but i guess there's somewhere between like hot water music and propaganda musically i guess so if you haven't figured it out by now take my really shitty comparison and go with that if you've if you heard the two songs and you're like gee what would i compare them to just go with that but uh don't give me credit for it because i don't want it but uh like i said we got um uh we got a seven inch a split seven inch of echoes of harper's ferry and then their full length called never forget and the full length the cd the seven inches obviously a record so but we're gonna give them both away on this show uh to enter i it's been a while since i've done this i want to make sure i remember all the logistics and you did it just last week no i didn't tell them how to enter anything last week though last week we didn't give away anything this week though uh to enter send us an email with your name address um and anything else you might think is important for us to know like days that you don't pick up the mail or if it's your mom or dad's house so that we don't write balls on the outside of your package or something let's just if you if it is your parents house or your work just include that on the off chance i trace my penis on your package the off chance real slight if you don't put it's your work or your parents house my penis will be on the outside of your package it'll be a package on a package i don't know it depends on how uh into it i get i get you know if i happen to tape it there nail it there you'll just get it with your package anyway so send us all that and then put echoes of harper's ferry contest in the subject line or if you don't know how to spell echoes of harper's ferry just put eohf contest in the subject line uh again name information send it all to sound scene revolution at gmail.com that's i don't know how to spell it sound scene revolution at gmail.com and uh just include a real quick subject line we were talking about uh or a real quick uh little note so that we know you listen because we were talking about political bands and all that shit in the interview because these guys are kind of political and people tend to fall between the two spectrums of like anti-flag or propaganda what are some of your favorite political bands and why yeah just one political band you don't gotta go through a bunch we're not looking for an essay two or three lines all right i'm not reading this honestly if i see you put the effort in it's like kindergarten if you wrote something you you get it you get a pass so just include that send it all sound scene revolution at gmail.com and you will be entered to win uh the full length never forget and they're seven inch with sleepers sleep horse and if i'm mispronouncing the name it's either sleep horse or sleeper horse and to everybody in that band sorry if you want me to get your name right go beyond the show uh we're gonna leave you with one more track off of their full length never forget it's called back to cleveland it's kind of their anthem of how much where they live can kind of suck and it includes san jose they mentioned san jose in the song so it's a little tie-in between us and them even though they wrote it before they knew who i was so enjoy that and we'll catch you guys next week with more uh stuff bye

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