Broadway Calls

After close to a year off of touring, Broadway Calls hit the road with Living With Lions in support of their new EP Toxic Kids. With a six new songs under their belts, a new bass player on their side and a renewed energy, Broadway Calls are set to bring their pop-punk madness to North America.

We caught up with the band on the first day of the tour, at Vancouver’s Media Club, to talk about the upcoming shows, their new EP and what it feels like teaming up with their old friend Adam Willis.

Photos by Tony Fabro

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Bobby: Tonight’s the first night of your tour where you’re playing with the Flatliners, Living With Lions, Menzingers and more. Are you pumped to see how this tour goes?

Josh: Definitely.

Ty: They’re all old friends of ours, so it’s something to look forward to where you know everyone and you know what to expect. There’s nothing weird going into it. No wondering if that guy’s going to be a jerk. None of that. [laughs]

Josh: Yeah, we haven’t toured with Lions in like four years or something like that, so we’re excited.

Bobby: Nice to just get back together and rekindle the friendship. I know you guys toured with the Flatliners in April or something too.

Josh: April and May wasn’t it?

Ty: Yeah, that was it.

Bobby: Vancouver seems like an odd place to kick start the tour. Is it just because Living With Lions are from Vancouver or what?

Ty: Yeah. It seems like every time we play here it’s with them and it’s at this venue. But it’s always fun.

Bobby: Halfway through this tour, a month from now, you guys are playing the Fest for its tenth anniversary. Are you excited to play this massive punk rock festival?

Ty: Yeah, definitely. I think this is our fourth year.

Josh: Yeah, this will be our fourth.

Ty: Fourth year in a row that we get to play it and it’s always fun and exhausting. You just see every friend that you’ve ever met playing music there because a lot of people come even from overseas. So it’s really cool.

Josh: And any band you want to see, you don’t. You miss. So you just kind of like pick two bands and you’re good.

Bobby: What’s the biggest conflict in the schedule this year that you guys have run into?

Ty: Menzingers and Flatliners play at the same time. That will be hard to choose [laughs] As we’re touring with both of them down the East Coast.

Bobby: They’ve gotta bribe you. “Come on, come to our show, fuck those guys!”

Josh: [laughs] Yeah, exactly.

Bobby: Lately there’s been a lot of punk rock festivals coming up. We’ve got The Fest, Best Friends Day, Riot Fest, Death To False Hope Fest and so on and so on. Why do you think suddenly there’s so many punk festivals happening?

Ty: I don’t know. I’ve noticed that there’s been more and more. I don’t know, maybe people think that they’re easy to put on or something and then they realize that it’s not once it happens. Then things get screwed up. But those ones that you named, they’ve done it year after year, so they’re doing it right obviously.

Bobby: Unlike the Sound Fest in Seattle…

Ty: Yeah, we played that…and it just wasn’t organized very well.

Bobby: I know it’s been getting a lot of coverage lately for not paying most of the bands. Did you guys run into that problem?

Josh: Yeah.

Ty: We did, but they…

Josh: They made it right.

Ty: They came through with the money eventually. It was confusing and scary for a few days.

Josh: They paid us with a check and then a week later it bounced. Then like two weeks, then they got a hold of us and they paid us over time. It’s a bummer that all this stuff is happening but they’re making good with everything they did.

Bobby: Just at the mention of it, you guys kind of laughed. Was it a weird feeling being there? Can you describe what happened?

Josh: Well, all the venues were spread apart so it wasn’t a festival. It was just shows that happened to be on the same night. It was unfortunate… our show was just another shitty Seattle show I think.

Ty: Yeah, Seattle has never been great for us so we didn’t really expect a whole lot. So we got there and that’s what we got! [laughs]

Bobby: Do you think that’s one of the downfalls of there being so many of these festivals now? That people see it and think “oh, if they can do it, I can do it too.” Then they try to put it on and it fails.

Ty:  Yeah, I think that definitely happens. I think people do that too, just regular show promoters. They try to put on shows and they don’t know what they’re doing. It happens all the time.

Bobby: Do you think the fact that the throughout the summer, The Warped Tour used to be the punk festival and now it’s kind of….

Josh: The anti-punk festival. [laughs]

Bobby: Yeah, it’s kind of downhill. Do you think the fact that Warped Tour has gone for a different sound has made more and more people want to start their own festival?

Ty: Maybe.

Josh: I think it’s all the kind of same era of people who are doing it.

Bobby: Yeah, they’re trying to fill a gap or fill a void or something like that.

Ty: Maybe, yeah. They’re trying to keep it not huge corporate sponsors and military sponsors like Warped Tour does; I think they’re trying to keep it a little more legitimate.

Bobby: This upcoming tour that you guys are kicking off tonight is in support/anticipation of your new EP Toxic Kids which is being released on All For Hope Records in the US and Banquet Records in the UK. Can you tell us a bit about that EP?

Ty: Yeah. We’ve been home for like the last year and a half just writing. The plan originally was we were writing for our next full length for SideOneDummy but then earlier this summer, we went and we recorded one song with Jack right?

Josh: Yeah, one song for that EP.

Ty: For the Comadre mixtape; and we just realized how fun and relaxed it can be recording with him. We recorded with him before but it had been a while and so Josh said we should just do an EP because we wanted something new to tour on this fall around The Fest. So we did the six songs with Jack and we had some friends want to help us put it out. So it was really cool how it all came together like that.

Bobby: What made you decide to go with your friends at All For Hope and Banquet Records instead of releasing it through SideOneDummy?

Josh: Well, we just wanted to do it ourselves. SideOne wanted us to focus on the full length and we were like “no, we have a new bass player and we want to tour for The Fest.” We already had The Fest booked and we didn’t want to rush a full length. So they gave us permission to do it ourselves or with whoever we wanted to do it with. And we just asked a few people.

Bobby: So are you still working on a full length?

Josh: Yeah. We actually had to postpone our recording because we’re touring more.

Ty: Our focus right now is just kind of get back on the road because it’s been so long. It’s been over a year since we’ve toured in North America or anywhere really. So this is going to re-energize us I guess.

Bobby: I was reading in some interviews how Josh was saying that when you guys were recording Good Views, Bad News, it was kind of like a rushed writing process. Now you’ve been writing songs for the full length basically since last August. Is that one reason you guys wanted to take your time? Because Good Views was kind of rushed?

Ty: Right. We definitely wanted to take our time, and we have been. But I think no matter when we book the recording, it’s going to kind of feel like there’s pressure. That’s what I’ve learned. You could have twenty songs that you think are awesome but you never really know if it’s going to make a good record until you get into the studio. But yeah, we’re definitely taking our time this time for sure.

Bobby: For the Toxic Kids EP, the title track is a follow-up to Suffer The Kids from the self-titled album. What made you decide to go that route with it?

Ty: I don’t know. People really like Suffer The Kids and that was one of the songs that came out really fast. Its just one verse repeated over and over again, I probably wrote it in like ten minutes or something like that. We still play it every show and I like the idea of the song so I kind of wanted to follow up with it but make it a little more of a fictional story instead of just kind of just preaching these ideas or whatever. So I came up with this story of these two guys in the future who are in love but they’re still persecuted for the way they live that they have to start a violent revolution to live the way they live. That’s what the song’s about.

Bobby: Do you think the world’s going to turn out that way?

Ty: I hope not. The sad thing is it is that way in certain countries. It is currently. There are revolutions happening all over like in the Middle East this last spring. I think that we’ve progressed past that here and hopefully it won’t ever regress.

Bobby: I haven’t heard the entire EP yet but the songs I have heard seem to be a lot snottier and grittier. It’s more raw I guess. Was that intentional going into it?

Josh: Yeah, we wanted to. It was just a little stale sitting at home, so we decided to write some faster, energetic songs and after we wrote a few, we decided we wanted to record basically live. We didn’t really do any overdubs or edits and the other stuff. We wanted to make it more raw sounding.

Ty: And we knew it could get that sound with Jack at his studio down in the bay because he kind of just specializes in that raw sound. Every record that comes out of there is good and it’s really high quality but it’s not all polished sounding. So we knew he could get that for us.

Bobby: You recorded the Teenage Bottlerocket split with him too right?

Ty: Yeah.

Bobby: So was the fact that you worked with him for that made you want to work with him again? What was it like working with him for the full EP?

Ty: He’s just one of our oldest friends too when it comes to playing music. We’ve known him since before Broadway Calls was a band. Yeah, he’s just a good friend with a good studio. We knew we could get the sound we wanted and we knew it would be fun and we knew that it would be comfortable.

Bobby: And, as you said earlier, this was the first album with Adam on bass. What was it like having him adding to the writing process?

Josh: It was awesome. All the other stuff, Ty and I would write it together. The last record, Matt had nothing to do with the writing – same with the record before. He (Adam) was at every practice, we didn’t practice with just us two which was normally how it was. We would write everything, just me and him, and then show Matt how to play it. But he was at every practice and had just as much input as I did or Ty did.

Bobby: So it was nice to have that third voice to the room?

Josh: Yeah, yeah. It was really good.

Bobby: Of course, you guys all played together in Countdown To Life before Broadway Calls. So what was it like getting all in a room together again? Was it like good old times?

Adam: I think it was. I think it took a lot of pressure off trying to write music. I think it just kind of flowed easier.

Ty: Like the first show that Adam played with us was in Tokyo. It was at this festival and he hadn’t really decided if he was going to be in the band yet. He was just coming along for the Japan trip. We wanted him in the band while we were over there, he decided that it just felt like the same old three guys or whatever. [laughs]

Bobby: And then, of course, kick starting in Tokyo is not a bad way to start.

Adam: Yeah, it was like the best way to be treated.

Josh: It’s all downhill from there. [everyone laughs]

Adam: Which, I’ve noticed [laughs]. Nah, it’s still fun.

Bobby: I guess that’s about it; thanks a lot. Do you have any final thoughts that you’d like to add?

Ty: Nah, thank you.

Josh: Check out the EP.

Ty: Yeah – check it out.

Josh: Download or buy it – whatever you want to do.