The name Curious Volume doesn't mean anything. It's from Edgar Allen
Poe's "The Raven." It doesn't have any symbolic meaning other than that
with a meaningless name, we can take our music any direction we want to
and our name will still make the same amount of sense (or lack
thereof).
How did the band get together and what do you guys bring to each other that make the music work?
Trotta and I started the band in 2003 when we were in 7th grade. Since
then we've had a few lineup changes. Our current lineup was formed in
January of 2011. Brian and I were in bands together at school and would
jam after school all the time. He was always helping us out, playing
keyboards for our bigger shows and being my go-to "ear" to bounce my
ideas off of. He was an unofficial member for a long time until we
decided that he belonged in the band forrealz. Zach had been filling in
on drums for us for a few months and the fit was just too good to deny.
His old band had just broken up, so we stole him and now he's never
allowed to escape. Both Brian and Zach have contributed so much within
the past year and a half or so, it's really impossible to imagine where
we'd be without them. Trotta and I would just be yelling at each other.
Describe your style of music? What is skate punk?
We've never been able to put a genre-label on our music. We've gone
through phases where we were rock n' roll, punk, ska-punk, etc. I'm very
uncomfortable with catering to one genre when I write. We all listen to
so much different music that it usually comes out sounding like a
conflagration of all of that stuff. When people ask me what genre we
are, I usually just say, "punk," because I like to think that no matter
how weird our music gets, we're always keeping things as raw as possible
and thus maintaining that "punk" vibe.
Skate punk is I guess one of the
genres that could fit our music. When I think "skate-punk" I think of
Suicide Machines, NOFX, The Offspring. We're definitely hugely
influenced by that type of music.
To people who say, "real punk" is dead, how do you respond?
It depends how you define "punk." I think if you're looking for every
band that falls into the category of punk to sound like The Casualties
or The Ramones or something, that's a very unfortunate way to look at
it. Punk's sound has evolved over the years, as has the appearances and
the mannerisms and activities. But at the root of it, the DIY rebellious
attitude could be found all over the place in music and shouldn't be
taken for granted. You can't go to a local show with 14 year old kids
running around beating each other up, having the time of their lives and
tell me punk is dead. Also, one could say I'm an anarchist. I'm not an
anarchist for the punk cred, but obviously that's been a relevant facet
of a lot of punk movements over the years.
We usually have a loose idea of the songs we're gonna play. I myself
usually do a lot of running around and hurting myself. Everyone else
plays with a lot of life and energy as well. Usually kids know the words
to our songs so they help sing along and stuff. Nothing fancy, just
heartfelt performances. We also prefer to have Biggie or Wu-Tang
blasting before we start playing.
Any crazy band, show or fan stories?
It's difficult to choose just one! This past January, we went on tour
with No Such Noise! from South Jersey. The whole tour was wild and we
became best buds with them. The highlight of craziness was definitely,
believe it or not, North Carolina. We played at this venue that used to
be a movie theater, and found out during the show that our sets would be
followed by a dubstep rave. Needless to say, we fully embraced this and
went all out. Danced to dustup music the whole night, some of us got
pretty drunk, and we made some friends with the locals. The whole night
was a sensory overload. The details of the craziness should probably
stay within the bands, but yeah. Gotta go with the North Carolina dustep
rave.
Biggest rock star moment as a band?
I can't think of any. I consider any time that I get free booze a "rock
star" moment, but that definitely doesn't speak for the whole band.
Whenever Trotta walks away from the rest of the band and does his own
thing (when we're at the merch table or watching another band play, for
instance), I send him a text that says "rock star." He does the same
thing to me. He actually deserves credit for starting that. I hate
giving him credit though, so forget I said that.
Biggest failure as a band?
We have lost two battle of the bands. But we won one. Battles of
the bands are stupid, and usually aren't taken very seriously, for good
reason. But yeah, we've failed at those.
Tell us about Mumbles & Whispers.
Mumbles & Whispers is the album that I wrote from 2006-2009. We
first released it in 2010 with our old lineup. Recently we recorded it
again, to do it justice with the new and improved lineup. We took our
time and Brian did an awesome job of engineering it. We improved the
songs and re-pressed the CDs with new art. We give it away for free
online. The lyrics range from ridiculously depressed to deliriously
optimistic.
The main differences between the old and new versions are the recording
quality, a generally more daring and tasteful take on a lot of the
music, and the fact that I know how to sing now. Listening back to the
old versions, it's embarrassing that I allowed my horrible squawking to
be released for people to listen to. This new version is like the
"grown-up" take. We think it's the way that these songs were intended to
be heard. Also, we made the transitions between songs cooler and
totally redid the track Fifteen Minutes.
Any plans of touring in the near future? New album?
We will be announcing two tours very soon. We can't say who we're going
with just yet, but we can say that we'll be venturing out further than
we ever have. Also, we're currently recording a new single that will be
released on a 7" split record. Again, we're not at liberty to say who's
putting that out or who the other band on the split will be, but we are
extremely excited to be making these announcements in the near future.
As for the next full length, I'm done writing all 11 songs. We've pieced
about 3/4 of the record together as a band so far, and the writing
process has been both challenging and rewarding. We have no idea when
that's coming out, but definitely not until we get these next couple of
tours under our belts so that we could release it to as many people as
possible.
Anything else to add?
Please go ahead and download our music for free at CuriousVolume.com.
Share it with your friends, come see us on tour, follow us on twitter,
like us on Facebook, come over to meet my parents, etc. Thanks so much
for the great questions, and thanks to the readers for either reading
through all of my rambling answers or just skipping ahead to the last
question to find out what a badass note I ended this interview on. I did
it all for the Nookie.
Check out Curious Volume at these sites:
Gotta love dNo lol.
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