Backslashes & Bad Ideas (Broken Records Music Festival Interview)

Interview by Gerard Ucelli

What was the experience of playing the BRM concert like?
We all really enjoyed playing the BRM concert last month. It was well organized, had a good turnout, and was a great chance for us branch out and play for a different crowd we don't always get to see. Playing with a band like Major League in our hometown was a great experience. The Optimators from the beer garden helped a bit too.

How do you feel about Broken Records Magazine, and why is a united Staten Island important?
BRM is a good outlet to help expose new, upcoming talent and helps everyone keep tabs on old favorites. Our music scene needs unity more than anything else. It's the only way we can all grow, improve and gain a fan base outside of our friends and family. It's great to see BRM put on a concert where artists of all walks of life can get together over two days and perform. Also after an event like Hurricane Sandy it was amazing to see countless people get together and help each other. Hopefully that spirit can continue an bring people together in the future.

What do you stand for as an artist?
As artists we stand because there are no chairs on stage.

I notice you use memes to your advantage on a constant basis. Do you think memes can be a new way in social media to promote yourself?
We feel like they reflect our personality perfectly. We don't do it for marketing purposes as much as we do it because we all love to laugh. The purpose of music is for enjoyment and to make people smile. We feel like many people in the industry take themselves and their music too seriously. We're all very dedicated but we understand how to be humble and laugh at ourselves among other things As much as we want people to go to our page to listen to our music, we also want people to see a lighter side to things and learn to laugh along with us through everything.

What is pop-punk to you and why do you do it?
We do the "pop punk" because Josh isn't hardcore enough. The thought of a breakdown gives him indigestion.

Tell us about your recent release, Nothing Left To Give.
Nothing Left To Give is our debut release from August 4th of this year. It's a five song, self-released EP, that we spent the better part of the last two years writing while playing shows. It's a culmination of work as recent as the week we went into the studio, dating all the way back to 2008 when Nick DePalo, Ricky, and Nick Colella were in Cobalt Sky. We were very fortunate to work with Joe Dell'aquila at Exeter Recordings in New Jersey. He helped us mold and finalize many of the ideas we had for the record and executed them far better than we could anticipate. I don't think we could have been any happier with the way the record came out. As far as for the future, we recently added our good friend Ricky Abolt on guitar and have some shows booked for this winter. We were originally expecting to tour this month, but some difficulties with the other bands involved forced the tour to be canceled. We are hoping to tour sometime in the spring with the help of our friends in Persistent Heart Media.

If you had to create the Avengers of music, who's on your team in addition to yourself?

Theoretically if we had to create an Avengers team we would have to start with Josh as Iron Man. That's pretty much a no brainier for us because Josh and Robert Downey Jr. are both serious tools. Rick is the dude with the bow and arrow. Nick Colella is gonna have to be Thor for very obviously reasons. Nick DePalo is Captain America, because Captain Canada doesn't exist. Ed is definitely the hulk. And our friend Joe Dell'aquila would be Samuel L Jackson.

Check out their album review on TheSIBandGuy

Nothing Left to Give for download