SHAMBLES
Interview
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'A bunch of people drinking sh*tty beer and playing music.'
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After accidentally being followed by Shambles on Twitter and hearing their music online, I decided to try my luck and contact them. I sent an e-mail, with hopes of not being too annoying of a person, and it worked.
Originated form Boston, Massachusetts, four guys - Rob (guitar/vocals), Jeremy (bass/vocals), Ben (drums/vocals) and PJ (guitar) agreed to answer some of the questions I sent them (because I am too broke to fly to Boston).
P.S.: Ben has a thing for Candy Hearts. Really.
HOW DID YOU START THE BAND?
Jeremy: We started in 2011, but between then and now we've had two kind of… extended hiatuses. I was friends with Rob's [guitarist] roommate Rinnie and I was talking to her about his old hardcore band Energy. I was sort of making fun of them and Rinnie turned around and snitched on me to Rob. After that, Rob was like "f*ck it, let's play some music together." Ben, PJ and I were in another band together at the time called Yale, Massachusetts and Roger, the singer, was on tour so we decided to just kind of… start a new one with Rob.
WHY THE NAME SHAMBLES?
Ben: Well, Candy Hearts was already taken so…
Rob: Ha. We had some other name that we all liked, but we found out that there was another band already named that, so we basically just looked up a synonym for it on the Internet and came to Shambles… Which is also kind of another band's name, but f*ck it.
PJ: I had literally nothing to do with the naming.
HOW DID YOU BECAME ENGAGED INTO MUSIC?
Ben: My parents were musicians and they thought it was important for me to play an instrument growing up. I didn't want to, so I picked the one that would annoy them the most: drums. Technically, I started on marimba.
PJ: I started playing violin when I was 8 years old and I knew people who were looking for a bass player, so I lied to them and said I played bass. Then I got sick of the bass and started playing guitar and now here I am.
Rob: When I was 16, I was really into bands like Anti-Flag and The Unseen and my dad had a guitar, so I took it out of his closet and taught myself how to play it. Nothing's changed since then.
Jeremy: I'm definitely the least talented musician in the band. I started playing bass pretty late when I realized being a musician would be the only way any girls would talk to me. Ironically, now that I'm 27, I try to hide the fact that I play bass in a pop-punk band from girls.
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| Rob, PJ, Ben and Jeremy |
WHAT BANDS/ MUSICIANS INFLUENCED YOUR MUSIC STYLE?
PJ: Kellin Quinnslow, a mix between the dude that sings for some s*itty crabcore band and the NFL player, Kellen Winslow. In all seriousness though, my favorite band is Blink 182.
Ben: The Ergs! are my favorite band and Mikey Erg is the man, because he's great drummer and he sings. We played with him a couple months ago… he looks great, like he's lost weight.
Rob: I gotta put Osker in there somewhere, but most recently just metal.
Jeremy: Burrito metal only for me. But seriously, it's pretty cool, because we all listen to a ton of different music and I think, it comes out in our songs. Rob and I listened to a lot of punk and hardcore growing up and we all listened to a ton of pop punk. It's funny, because we've had people say we're more punk sounding than most pop punk bands and we've had people say we're way popp-ier than most punk bands.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE 'SHAMBLES EP' & 'MOVE AWAY'?
Rob: The Self-titled EP was a collection of songs we've written through our whole life, since I was a teenager, but never really had a chance to use them, because I'd never been in a pop punk band. Move Away is definitely a more mature album and the songs are about things that more relevant to our lives.
Jeremy: Yeah, I'm with Rob. The songs I wrote on the first one, I don't really know how long it took to write, because I wrote them over a long period of time. Some of them aren't really so relevant anymore, but they're still rad.
PJ: It took us literally as long to write them as it takes to listen to them.
Jeremy: This new one, most of the songs I wrote while I was living in Chicago on my now and they're a little less about things like girls and more about life in general. Joni Mitchell, the last song on Move Away, is actually an old one that we just never recorded, so it's kind go funny to have it come out now.
WHO IS THE FRONTMAN/ LEAD VOCALS IN THE BAND?
Rob: Jeremy and I split the song writing and singing basically 50/50 down the line. On the first EP, we both sing on a lot of songs together and on Move Away the vocals are more split between the two of us.
WAS IT HARD TO GET YOUR BAND OUT THERE - BOOKING GIGS, BUILDING UP THE FAN BASE?
Rob: I don't think we've really gotten 'out there' yet - almost all of our shows are in Boston with a lot of the same bands like Great Lakes and Save Ends (although those bands are some of our favorites), so we're still working towards it. Hopefully, with people like you, we'll get there soon.
Jeremy: Yeah. Agree. We also got super lucky, that Tony from 'No Idea' Records, who puts on The Fest down in Gainesville, Florida, is letting us play with some of our favorite bands. The Fest is seriously like Warped Tour for adults and I am ridiculously stoked, that I'm going to get to say I'm playing a festival with bands like ALL, Dillinger Four and The Menzingers.
Ben: And Candy Hearts!
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE?
Rob: Honestly, we're not really looking for anything like labels or record deals, we're just trying to play our music and, hopefully, people will be into it. You known, we try to give out our merch for free or really cheap, we don't take money form local shows, all of our music is free… We just like hanging out with our friends someplace different than a bar.
PJ: I'm waiting for 'MCA' Records or 'Drive-Thru' Records to call me… in 2001.
Ben: To quote Shambles, "I can't see what the future holds" AND to quote Bono, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for."
Jeremy: Yeah, I think, the next thing we definitely want to do is a full length [album], which, I think, we'll hopefully put ourselves after we've gotten everyone super stoked on our stuff we have now. Plus, I'm hoping Guy Fieri follows us on Twitter some day soon.
DESCRIBE YOUR BAND IN ONE SHORT SENTENCE FOR THOSE, WHO HAVEN'T HEARD YOU YET.
PJ: Defend Kellin Quinslow.
Ben: The World Is A Delicious Place and I Am No Longer Afraid To Fry.
Rob: I don't want anything to do with defending pop punk, whatsoever.
Jeremy: A bunch of people drinking sh*tty beer and playing music we'd listen to on the jukebox at a sh*tty dive bar.
Listen and download their songs here!
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