The Isotopes

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Ashley: How did the band form and how did you guys come up with the name The Isotopes?

Evan: We wanted to do something that came naturally to us. To me as a songwriter, I was a Baseball fan growing up. It was just a natural fit to start doing songs about Baseball. I stole the name from The Simpsons. In 2006, I thought that it was a pretty clever name for a band and I am not sure how I feel about it now, but I still think it works pretty cool for our band.

Ashley: You call yourselves the World’s Greatest Punk band. How does the band infuse both Baseball and punk rock together in your music?

Evan: If you listen to the songs, all of them are Baseball themed. It really just comes naturally to do that for us. Our stage show and everything is fun, we have an announcer, we wear baseball hats and we just kind of play the whole Baseball part in our music. Punk rock is the music that we love and that we grew up listening to and punk rock is the only thing we know how to do, right, so it is the two things we are best at which is Baseball and punk rock and it just seemed like a fit to do the band like that.

Ashley: How do you know you are the World’s Greatest?

Evan: I am pretty sure there is not that many out there. I have heard there are a few other guys doing Baseball stuff and they are pretty good. I am pretty certain that we were the first guys to do it as far as I have been able to find on the internet. As soon as we started this band, I decided to find out who else was doing it. I searched the internet pretty thoroughly. I don’t know, if we are the greatest or not, it is our claim at this point anyway. Anyone is welcome to challenge it, but so far I think people are pretty on board with it. We take it tongue and cheek. It is important to have confidence, and we don’t want to say we are the second best. You have to be like, hey we are the champions, were gonna win this game. It is important to have confidence so you can go out and do your best every night.

Ashley: Do you ever fear that the Baseball theme will just become a gimmick, or do you treat it as something that makes you stand out?

Evan: I think both. It’s certainly a gimmick, but at the same time it does ultimately make us stand out and that has had a positive effect for sure. I will be the first to admit that we are not breaking any new ground as far as songwriting goes. As far a genre and music style we are fairly derivative of the punk bands that came before us we loved like The Ramones and the Buzzcocks and stuff like that. The Baseball thing certainly gives us the angle to be original. As far as it being a gimmick, we welcome that, but at the same time though it should be noted that we are doing what we love.

Ashley: Do you feel that the Baseball hat is a modern day take on The Ramones’ leather jackets?

Evan: I think it certainly is, it is apart of our uniform. It is pretty widely know that The Ramones’ leather jackets was regarded in their band a their uniform. We would never take the stage without our hats, just like they would never do that without their leather jackets.

Ashley: With the Baseball theme so highly influenced in your songs, are you afraid you will run out of songs to write about?

Evan: No, that’s not going to happen. Yeah, everyone always asks me that. I will always be able to come up with Baseball songs. You can compare it to like love songs, people sing love songs throughout their whole career. It’s just how you look at it.

Ashley: On your EP Blood Diamond, where does the inspiration come from to write such songs like Rule 21 and Operation: Vamos?

Evan: Well, Operation: Vamos was written about a player who got kidnapped last year. He was a rookie who came over, made a bunch of money then went home to Venezuela, they all knew about it and he got kidnapped and held for ransom. As soon as we heard that story come out it just seemed like a natural thing to write a song about.  And then Rule 21 was something I wanted to talk about for a while. There is an interesting back story there about shoeless Joe and Pete Rose with those guys who got erased from Baseball, regardless of them being some of the greatest in Baseball ever. It is kind of a touching story to talk about. I like to write about whatever I am feeling at the time.

(side note: Rule 21 (D) “Any player, umpire, or club or league official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.”)

Ashley: Tell me a little bit about the artwork for the EP Blood Diamond and what is the meaning behind the name of the EP?

Evan: Good question. I come up with all the artwork for The Isotopes. I designed the logo a few years ago and I drew the Baseball bats by hand, I photocopied them and scanned them so we use them on everything now. I wanted to go with a generally striking look to it, so once we got the name Blood Diamond for the EP it was kind of natural to go with red, white and black. I think it looks pretty cool. There is not a conscious meaning, it was kind of a cheap play on words. It’s got no reference to the blood diamonds in Africa. We are not making a political statement at all. On a side note, I think the EP has a strong theme of money going through it like each song title, the content of each song, and the title of the album itself. I didn’t realize it at the time but after we released it I was like “wow, everything is about money on that record” which I found kind of interesting just as a reflective point.

Ashley: I understand that your U.S. tour was canceled due to van issues, but the band is still scheduled to play the Canadian tour dates with Off With Their Heads, right?

Evan: That is right. We are leaving tomorrow.

Ashley: Are you excited to play the Canadian tour with Off With Their Heads?

Evan: Yeah, it’s going to be really fun. It is going to be great to get on the road with those guys and meet them because we haven’t met them before and we are real big fans of the band. It is just going to be a cool opportunity to meet up with those guys and do these dates.

Ashley: What was the deciding factor that caused the band to decide to finally cancel the U.S. tour?

Evan: Our van was just totally dead. We had a mechanic look at it, he said maybe we could get down to LA the way it was, but we had a whole North American tour planned so getting down to LA was not going to do it. We had a place to stay for a few days in Oakland so we could sort our stuff out and I ended up selling the van on craigslist in Oakland and we flew home from there. It was at the point were it was going to be us throwing so much money into that van and there was no guarantee that it would work even at that point. It was too bad it had to be canceled; there was no other way around it. Maybe in 2013 we will get a new van, but not right now.

Ashley: Were you upset that you had to miss out on The Fest?

Evan: Yes, that was the biggest bummer of it all I think. It was the first year that we had gotten the opportunity to go down there and do that. Everyone was looking forward to that so much and there were some great bands on that fest and to miss those bands was like the biggest bummer. Like it was going to be fun to play, but just the whole weekend itself was going to be a lot of fun, but it was a blow.

Ashley: In the efforts to support your bassist, Noah “ Rookie Rochelle” in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, a t-shirt has been made to order. How is he doing?

Evan: I saw him post on the pop punk board today that he is doing alright now. Not great, but he is smiling. With accounts from some other people, I have heard that it is not pretty down there. He is a tough guy, you know. He is a certified lifeguard and generally pretty tough. I know he is doing okay down there, but not by our standards.

Ashley: How much support have you seen come out of the t-shirt for Noah “Rookie Rochelle”?

Evan: It has been absolutely overwhelming; it has been great. We put that up on Monday, I think and we have had a lot of interest and a lot of purchases as well as people donating money on top of buying a t-shirt. It has been really, really positive. I was just floored by it with the amount of support that Noah has got. I can’t believe has positive it has been.

Ashley: What are your feelings about FEMA and their actions towards the hurricane Sandy tragedy?

Evan: I actually don’t know anything about it other than what Noah has told me about his individual case, that for whatever reason he did not qualify and I don’t know why.  I don’t know what their qualification system is or what they are doing down there. I can’t really comment on that. I imagine there is a lot of bureaucracy involved in that, so it is going to be the way it is. I don’t want to say because I am not educated enough on their policies to know exactly what I should say about it. It’s too bad though.

Ashley: Will your bassist Noah “Rookie Rochelle” be able to play the Canadian tour dates with Off With Their Heads?

Evan: No, he is not going to be able to make those dates. We have a replacement, his name is Victor Spoils.

Ashley: You guys are known as the bad boys of summer, would you say that is a true statement?

Evan: Absolutely.

Ashley: The music video “Ballad of Rey Ordonez”, what was the concept behind the video?

Evan: We were working with a really low budget and we had a guy that wanted to come out and just film us on a diamond which seemed like the obvious thing to do and then I edited that thing myself, I wanted to put in all those old clips of Rey playing and I played with them a bit and just put them in where I thought they would be cool. Basically, that is the most exciting part of that video for me watching all those great plays that he made. I thought it was cool to do a cut like that with stolen footage (laughs). It was fun to make.

Ashley: Gearing up for a new year, what can we expect to see in 2013 from The Isotopes?

Evan: I think everyone can expect to see a large output of songs for the first time. We are considering doing a full length or a string of singles. We are going to get more hats, a bunch of hats because we had so many people wanting hats that we sold out of them a couple of times. New songs, we are going to do a whole bunch of shows, we are going to try to play every festival possible. I think it is going to be our best season so far, so yeah it is going to be something to look forward to.