(Photo credit: Pocholo Miguel Itona) |
Sometimes, we try really hard to force something to happen in a certain timeframe… And, for whatever reason, it just never works out - right until the moment it’s supposed to, and not a second sooner. This interview with Excide is a perfect example.
I’m not going to lie to you, this interview is three years in the making. I aimed to interview Excide for the third issue of the zine - simply because I really dug the band - and our timelines just never lined up. All this to be said, I’m glad this is the moment in the band’s history I’m capturing.
Excide released their first EP a few days into 2020, with a two-song promo following that August. It was unlike a lot of hardcore music coming out at the time, leaning heavily towards Snapcase and Quicksand worship. Fast forward to now, and the band is celebrating their first full-length record, Deliberate Revolver, released in September on New Morality Zine. The record takes those established influences and expands on them, adding in touches of 90’s emo and alt-rock, perfectly-placed samples, and several other things that add that little “something” to push every track over the edge. The result is perfectly-formed post-hardcore that fits on bills with bands that range from traditional hardcore, to alt-rock, all the way to Evergreen Terrace (yes, really) and back again.
Vocalist Tyler Washington and guitarist Gage Lanza joined me for an evening phonecall where we talked about Deliberate Revolver, where Tyler gets his samples and inspiration from, hardcore in their home states, the necessity of Wyatt Oberholzer’s mad genius in recording the record, funny moments from the studio, and more. In their honor, grab a cup of your favorite caffeinated beverage and settle in for the read.
(Photo credit: Ashley Simpson)
AA: Introduce yourselves with your name, what you do in Excide, and a random fact about yourself.
TW: My name is Tyler, I sing in Excide, and a fun fact about myself… I work in healthcare. There you go. [laughs]
GL: Hi, my name is Gage, I play guitar in Excide, and a fact about myself that isn’t already plastered all over the internet… I used to fingerboard growing up. I used to play with Tech Decks and got way too into it. I actually met the dudes in Boundaries because I was in a Discord chat with them and heard [tapping noises], which is the sound of a tiny wooden skateboard clacking against a wooden desk. And I just called out, “Yo, is that a fingerboard?” [laughs] Lo and behold, friendship!
AA: Who played the first hardcore show you attended? What impact did that have on keeping you involved?
TW: My first show ever at 14 was a Christian deathcore show. The first hardcore show that I accidentally went to, my shitty high school band played, and a bunch of South Florida hardcore bands played. I got the fucking shit beat out of me. [laughs]
That was my introduction. We played, everyone was either outside or probably laughing at us, and these South Florida bands went on, and it was chaos. We had this spot called One Unit in Columbia, SC. It was a shared garage that a bunch of people rented out, and they used to hold shows there all the time. It was a great time, though. I was like, “This is different.” I was used to moshing, I just wasn’t used to “getting thrown into the wall” moshing. [laughs]
GL: For sake of clarity, I’ll give you the first time I was introduced to hardcore as I would come to know it, or be involved with now. The show was in April 2016, I think? It was Turnstile, Basement, Defeater, and Colleen Green. I distinctly remember being driven by my mom with my friend Luke to Baltimore Soundstage. She was hanging in the back by the bar, but standing on the railing watching. I was hanging out and watching all this stuff, and I kinda understood what was happening in the middle of the room, but I was still on the side walls, kind of watching and waiting.
During Turnstile, I was pretty hefty at the time - and I had the grand idea, “Yo, this is the band to stage dive to, I know that much. I’m gonna stage dive.” There’s a great video my mom took - I think it was during “Fazed Out” - you see my big ass get up on the stage, kinda hop, skip, and jump across, and then, instead of doing the tried-and-true tuck, grab, and flail the rest of your body over, I just did a fuckin’ somersault and just dived, legs over head, just kinda rolled… And everybody either had enough awareness of what was happening or their survival instinct kicked in, and they moved, parted like the sea. [laughs] There’s a video of me just not getting caught, and I almost died! I landed on my neck and folded. Somehow I didn’t get paralyzed, but that would’ve been the end of my time doing this.
TW: Dude, I just realized I didn’t really answer either question, I just kinda said some stuff. [laughs]
(Photo credit: Pocholo Miguel Itona)
AA: [laughs] You told me some loose ideas of some bands that were there, that’s good enough for me! But, again, as some people might now wonder… Why did you keep going to hardcore shows?
GL: I don’t know! That’s probably the best response, because any right-minded person would’ve gathered their almost shattered being and walked out the front door and not come back. Especially watching the video back. That’s permanent evidence that you came here and almost died. [laughs] But, like I mentioned, I also had my friend Luke coming with me, and he kinda pushed me along. He’s the person I kinda consider my “oldhead,” even though he’s younger than me, because he put all of this in front of me and exposed me to this other world. So, despite my injury - I couldn’t walk right for months, I had a crick in my back, and a couple months later I finally recovered, and then I messed up my knee by falling on concrete, and I was messed up for another couple months… [laughs] I took my losses, but something about the whole scene and the way this music affected people… I wasn’t so involved in social media, I wasn’t seeing what people were posting about it, but I just kind of knew there was something about this so alluring and inviting. It made me feel comfortable where nowhere else would.
TW: [laughs] Inviting is not the word!!
GL: [laughs] Right, they’re literally beating my ass!! But, you get tough, or you get… carted out. In a way, it’s, you know, once you kinda shrug off your first bumps and bruises, you’re in it. And you’re a part of it.
TW: Same with my story. Got my ass beat, for no reason should I have wanted to come back - but I did, and it was cool. I stuck around, and I think after you prove yourself, you tough out those first couple trials… [laughs] People are like, “Oh! This kid’s fuckin’... He cares about this shit, how about that? We told him his shirt sucked but he came back.”
GL: In Baltimore, at least, I’d heard that new blood would show up, and it’s kinda an unspoken thing, like… “Well, we’ll see how long they last. If they keep coming around, if they keep getting knocked and bumped and they take a spill and get right back up and they’re still here for it, then they’re a lifer.” That, or they’re at least around long enough to integrate, you know?
AA: That’s a good point. Because, don’t get me wrong, the TikTok kids annoy the fuck out of me sometimes, but people get so… “Oh my god, I’m gonna be stuck with these people forever!” … And I’m always like, “No, you’re not. Just wait.” [laughs]
TW: I think the ones that wanna be here will stay here, and the ones that don’t, won’t. You know?
GL: That’s an important touchdown, because there’s so much waylay about this wave of TikTok kids coming in, so many people boohooing about so-and-so in here doing this, they don’t understand, they don’t appreciate, blah blah blah. There’s always been people that have come in, and whether they stay or not - give it two or three months.
AA: They’re either going to learn to adapt, just like everyone else did, or they’ll see themselves out. You know?
(Photo credit: Matthew Zagorski)
AA: You guys are involved in several other projects - I’ve watched Gage’s bio change from 500 band links to simply “I am in bands” to finally just Excide - what made you want to start a band like Excide?
TW: For me, this is a band I’ve wanted to start for a long time. Over the years, I’ve always been like, “One day I’m gonna start a fuckin’ Snapcase ripoff band!” or whatever. The band of my dreams. No one was ever interested, because no one gives a shit about Snapcase as much as I do, I feel like. [laughs] Obviously, it’s developed into a more adaptive project, just because there’s so many good post-hardcore bands of that era that were in that same realm, and even more obscure, and… Eventually, through searching, I just fell in love with all of it.
[At the same time], I hit a window of time where I was kinda between bands. The band I had been in for years looked like it was going to end, and then I had a bunch of rejected ideas from 3weekoldroses, from when I was playing in that band. I took those ideas and started writing the first couple demos, and they were more on the melodic side - just some of my weird ideas. I was working on those with some other friends, and then, eventually, I was like, “Well, fuck all that. Instead of trying to make this sound work for this other band with all my ‘weird’ ideas, I have all these other people at my disposal and all this extra time” - I was like, “Why even take the thrown-away ideas? Why not just come up with shit I really wanna do? I’ll finally just start the band that I've always wanted to do.” So yeah, that’s how that happened.
GL: I guess the final piece, after Tyler decided that… It became just gathering the people. I know you had Jake [Paris] immediately, I just so happened to move from Maryland to South Carolina and you caught wind of this and were like… [Southern accent] “Hey, wanna join a band?”
[all laughing]
TW: Is that supposed to be an impression of me?!
AA: Yeah, why’d you just hit Herbert the Pervert for that one?! [laughing]
GL: [laughing] I was trying to do your Southern twang, my bad!
But yeah, it was just the perfect storm. He had all these people, and he had an idea.
AA: What kind of things inspire you with this band, musically and lyrically?
TW: Musically, like I said, just a broad stroke of post-hardcore from the 90’s. Obviously the two people always grab off the top are Snapcase and Quicksand, but there’s so many other ones that I can think of. Cast Iron Hike was a big one for rhythm and stuff - honestly, even some of the guitar work and some of the vocals from Glassjaw… There’s Stillsuit… I mean, I could go on all day. There’s musical influences everywhere that we take from.
I feel like there was a blurred line between some of the post-hardcore and emo of the 90’s, and even Twelve Hour Turn, an emo band that I’m very into… I've always wanted to do a song like that, and Excide fits in this perfect realm where we can do that kind of stuff. We did “Marion” on the LP, and that was just, like, my big nod to Twelve Hour Turn. I feel like we pull from a lot of different places musically.
And then, as far as everything else… A lot of it just stems back to other music, as much as I hate to say. There’s some artistry that I’m into, as far as visuals and everything like that. Obviously, we have a very curated theme, I guess, in the way that we try to do all our visuals I think that there’s a certain type of artistry that I’m very into, and I don’t know what it’s fucking called. I just know what it looks like, and it’s cool. [laughs]
AA: I know exactly what you mean and also have no idea how to describe it.
TW: Yeah! I don’t know, I just know that it’s like… perfectly shitty. It’s shittily drawn things and shittily-sketched things in a very appealing, artistic way. I don’t really know. That. [laughs] Also, I think we throw around the idea of sampling a bunch of oldies pretty regularly. I personally am very into country from the 50’s and into the 70’s, that era of music. I think it’s really cool, it’s got a lot of shit that you don’t really hear anywhere else. It feels kind of raw and natural, like what we’d want out of a hardcore band. I personally pull a lot from that as well.
AA: Gage, you’re originally from Baltimore, and Tyler, you’re from South Carolina, currently living in Wilmington, Delaware. What are your respective scenes like? What are some of your favorite bands from your individual areas?
GL: Talking about Baltimore, and largely the Tri-State - we have what seems to be a very strong, seemingly-endless list of bands I could go through. For Baltimore specifically… I work at Ottobar so I’m just going to end up naming the bands of all my coworkers. [laughs] End It, Jivebomb… Obviously I gotta show respect to Next Step Up and Stout, the legends - we have Next Step Up playing a show in January, along with Trapped Under Ice. Baltimore always seems like it’s on the up-and-up.
When I first started coming to shows, it was a back-and-forth of having a strong scene with great bands, and a struggle for venues. I think that’s kind of a problem that a lot of people can relate to. We have a few, but it’d be nice to have one for smaller stuff. We can’t take everything to Ottobar or Soundstage, and sometimes our smaller venues get burnt out. So, for the most part, I’d say we have a strong group of bands with a sound cultivated here, but the venue thing, in my opinion, could always be better.
(Photo credit: Matthew Zagorski)
TW: There’s two music scenes I kind of feel a part of, and still trying to keep as in-touch with the South Carolina scene as possible. Recently, we played a show down there, and I gotta give props to the upstate boys, ‘cause this was my first time meeting them in person after hearing a little bit about them. The dudes in Candescent were really cool, and they came from upstate and told me the way things have been going up there.
My friend Jose is doing a great job of we’ve always been short on venues and stuff in SC, but they’re finding skate parks, whatever the fuck they can hold a show in, and just constantly putting out these awesome shows. A couple bands from the Northeast have gone down and had great reception there, up in Greenville and shit. It’s fuckin’ awesome to see, because there’s a resurgence of people who used to not go to shows, as well as a bunch of fresh faces showing up out there, and it’s drifting down to more central South Carolina and, hopefully, eventually, it’ll reach coastal South Carolina and get down to Charleston and stuff. Charleston and Columbia used to always be the spots, and now it’s kind of the opposite. We’re still struggling for venues in those places, and New Brooklyn takes on a lot of those packages… But the upstate is killin’ it, so shoutout to Candescent and all the people from up there.
And then, obviously, one of my favorite bands from South Carolina was Riot Stares, gotta shout them out.
As far as Delaware is concerned, that’s an awesome fuckin’ scene. I love being up here. It’s fuckin’ great. Everyone was super welcoming and receptive and to me moving up here, so that was awesome. We also don't have many venues - Delaware bands tend to just play Philly all the time. My favorite Delaware bands are Simulakra and Killing Me, and every iteration of band that those different people play in. [laughs]
AA: Early on in your journey as a band, you made a video for “Radiation Reel” that I personally loved. What was the process of doing that video like? Do you plan on doing another one anytime soon?
TW: [laughing] Oh man, the process on that one was so funny. So, really, it was just everyone kind of showing up, and me just kind of being like, “This is what we're gonna do.” Jake had a friend that was kind enough to lend us a storage unit. He had just gotten it, hadn’t put anything in there yet. In Charleston, storage units are just always cool bands jamming. That’s a pretty city-wide thing, so when you go into a storage facility in Charleston, there’s like… A dude who has an entire office setup with printers and a desk, with his door open, just chillin’, then you go a couple down and see a band playing, and it’s loud and chaotic and there’s people everywhere… It's sick.
So Jake said, “Yo, our friend is gonna let us borrow this unit, and we can shoot in there.” I was like, “Perfect. I don't know how to do crazy camera shit, and I’m scared to move the camera at all, but what we need to do is the most practical music video shoot ever. Keep the camera in one place, we’ll throw the fisheye on, and then we’ll just throw some lights in there, make it look all crazy and red and whatever, and then I’ll hit somebody up to edit it.”
So everyone showed up, and we just took turns listening to the song as loud as humanly possible in this fuckin’ caved-out storage facility. It hurt your ears, it hurt your eyes, because you were just locked in this tin box, and it was loud as all fuck. You couldn’t fit the whole band in there, so it was only single shots, and everyone took turns, 2 playthroughs or so. Then we took some B-roll, funny, stupid, shots, and yeah! I essentially just gave Errick Easterday a bunch of bullshit footage, and was like, “Hey man, I know this isn’t much to work with, but could you turn this into a music video?” And he knocked it out the park. At the end of the day, it’s not the most incredible music video ever, but you know, Errick turned it into something worth posting.
AA: I think it captures the vibe of the era of music you guys are inspired by really well. I love it.
TW: I’m glad it came across! As far as doing another one in the future - I kept trying to get one together for the LP, because it would’ve been nice to have some kind of visual but Jake spends so much fuckin time out of the country visiting Canada, we’ve changed some member stuff around, and I've been on tour with Foreign Hands… Gage was on tour with Shackled… And we just couldn’t get together.
GL: [With] all of our schedules, we maybe align for 2-3 days at a time, but then it’s like, “I need to take those 2-3 days for personal stuff. Like, I need them.” [laughs] So, ultimately, it just became, “Here’s an idea,” and then it would float away into the ether.
AA: You have some particularly interesting samples, especially on the song “Actualize.” Where do you get your samples from?
TW: [laughs] Ooh. Fun. So, I’m pretty sure every sample up until the actual LP was a fuckin’ Jim Carrey sample. I’m a big fan, not only for his comedic work, but more specifically as a philosopher. So, a lot of my quotes and samples and shit I pulled were weird Jim Carrey philosophy quotes. For the LP, a lot of them are mad obscure. I honestly can’t even begin to tell you some of the movies and shit I pulled some of these from, because it was hours of goofing around on YouTube and kind of running into ‘em. There’s a bunch of crazy ones. The first one on “12 Steps” is from… what is that fuckin movie… I'm forgetting the name. Either way, it’s usually movies. That’s my answer. [laughs]
They’re all very intentionally placed. Sometimes, even instrumentals… I feel like the chorus of “Human Error: Overload” on the LP, that chorus, I was like… I don’t want any vocals there. I just want a fuckin’ sample over the whole thing. Fuck doing any type of singing over the chorus of the song - the part of the song that everybody’s supposed to be hooked to - fuck that. We’re putting a sample there. [laughing] Dude, I love it. I don’t know. It’s kind of weird and old-school, I don’t know.
AA: That’s your time to stare all crazy and hit yourself in the head when you play it live, you know? [laughs]
GL: He’s gonna dive into the crowd. [laughs]
TW: [laughing] Oh god! I don’t know if I’m the “crazy stare” type.
AA: [laughing] You can stomp or run around or something!
GL: You’re finally gonna take out the tambourine. That’s what’s gonna happen.
TW: [laughs] Dude, funny side story - I brought a tambourine to perform with on the tour, because “Flip” has a tambourine in the intro, and I didn’t remember to use it the entire tour until the second-to-last show. Then I grabbed it late, so it started halfway through the intro. When I did it at Programme, it was just awkward. [laughs] Tambourines are kinda hard to keep on time!
Album art
AA: What were some things you aimed to do differently on Deliberate Revolver, as opposed to on the EPs?
TW: I think, for the earlier stuff, we kinda wrote shorter songs focused on solid verses, catchy choruses, and whatever else, obviously still in the vein of our influences. We played more to the obvious takeaway from the genre. It was just like, “Hey this is something you're familiar with.” You know? We geared it in that kind of sense.
With the LP, it’s like… We had a space of 8- to 12-ish songs that we got to play around with. “Actualize” was our most popular song, and something I said before going into it was, “Okay, we can’t just write ‘Actualize’ 12 times over.” We had to kind of shift gears. There has to be a concise middle, beginning, and end, that kind of thing. Therefore, something we aimed to do differently was expand on sonic footnotes that we left in prior songs, elaborating on more of our influences.
That’s probably the smartest thing I’ve said this whole time. [laughs]
GL: First, thank you, Professor Doctor Washington, for the amazing answer. [laughs]
No, but, in all seriousness - when looking at the full discography, you have the EP, the two songs, and then the record. The EP and the two songs… I like what Tyler said about “sonic footnotes.” There are repeated touchpoints, but the earlier songs all have, in their own regard, their own vibe. They’re always doing something slightly different. And, with that, going into the record, we were able to just kind of finally expand into those ideas, but also venture into new sonic terrain.
However, also, I’ve wanted to say, I don’t think with the previous stuff… The EP was done by Tyler and Dylan, down in South Carolina, at that time, and then we did “Radiation Reel” and “Actualize” up in North Carolina. And, when we finally settled into the LP, that LP could’ve only been done in a studio. And when I say that, I mean the amount of creativity and effort put in could only have happened between the five of us in that room - plus Wyatt [Oberholzer].
TW: Yeah - I was about to say, Wyatt was a big catalyst.
GL: Yeah. It allowed us, namely Tyler and Wyatt, to… I’m forgetting the word, but the two of them were shooting ideas back and forth like static electricity.
TW: I was about to say, we were like two atoms fissioning. [laughs]
(Photo credit: Pocholo Miguel Itona)
AA: Oh, yeah. I get a lot of really fun-sounding “mad scientist” explanations when people tell me about Wyatt. [laughs]
TW: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That’s how he is! He’s like, “Yo! Let’s take this acoustic guitar with fuckin’ 10-year-old strings and run it through a fuckin’ room mic and an auditorium compressor, and an HM-2 pedal, and let’s pin it all the way on the fuckin’ board so it’s in the red the whole time…” And he’s just back behind the board laughing the whole time like… [maniacal laughter] “It’s alive!!!”
AA: [laughing] Incredible.
TW: [laughing] Dude, he’s a nut. And he definitely encouraged us to also be… Well, I say “encourage”… He didn’t say “be a complete fuckin’ freak,” but his energy screams that.
GL: Oh, absolutely. We came in with our ideas, and… I don’t know. I imagine, with some producers, you come in with your ideas, and they’re there to mold and kind of guide… While Wyatt did that, it was also, like, he would try to tell you, “If we’re doing this, then we’re not getting crazy enough.” Or, “No, I like the trajectory here - let’s go one step further.”
AA: What’s your favorite song off the album?
TW: Ooh. Gage, you gotta go before me.
GL: I have one that’s kinda comical, and then one that is genuine. The comical one, I would say “Perdition Now.” And that is because… There’s a little bit of lore behind that song. When we were writing the songs, Tyler was sending us ideas at the beginning, and I remember listening to it for the first time and saying aloud to myself… Nobody’s in the room. No FaceTime call, nothing. Just going, “What the fuck is wrong with you, Tyler?!” [laughs] It just sounds so hare-brained, it’s crazy!! The start of that song, when I first heard it, it did the good thing, it raised the hairs on the back of my neck, but also, remembering that my hands have to do that… You know, before I learned it… I was like, “Why?! Why would you do this?!”
Fast forward to being in the studio, I will admit for myself, and do with this what you will - I came in with varying levels of readiness for each song. I can say personally I felt very confident on nailing that first part of “Perdition Now.” So, I think we got to that point where we were working on it, and I think Austin, for the drums, was struggling on one part. Not the intro, but where it shifts to another section - it was giving him some real trouble. So we started digging in on the guitars, and Wyatt counts me in, and I start playing, and I’m pretty sure it’s the first or second run, and I just hit it. Everybody in the room went “What the fuck?! [laughs] Like, why did you do that?” Wyatt looked at me and was like, “The hell is wrong with you?!” Which, admittedly, might’ve been his favorite line to say for the entire weekend to any of us, but that moment specifically… It was an extensive take. So, in that, it became my favorite just for that moment alone, and also, because the song rips.
As a favorite off the record, it’s probably between “Necessary Means” and “Human Error: Overload.” “Necessary Means” is just another… The entire song feels like it’s being pulled at opposite ends, and the threads are coming apart, like it’s gonna fall apart at any point in time, but it doesn’t. And “Human Error” … It’s just the riff. It was a riff that gave me hell when I was learning it, but, like… I came to really appreciate and love playing it as I dug into it more. I’m obviously gonna focus on the guitar side of stuff being that that’s what I’m doin’, but the whole song feels like it gels really well.
TW: For me, also… [laughs] Yeah, “Perdition Now” was hell for everyone involved, and like Gage said, he just walked in, and it was funny because we were passing the guitar back and forth so much. It was just, like, “Okay, you do this part.”
(Photo credit: Ashley Simpson)
GL: Do we wanna talk about the five strikes?
TW: [laughing] Oh, god. We’ll get to it.
So, anyway, we’re passing the guitar back and forth, and Gage steps up to the plate to do “Perdition Now,” and… I’m pretty sure he nailed it the first time, and had to go back and fill the gap in one part - a small thing - but nailed it, one take. And I was like… I don’t know. It just doesn’t make any sense, because everyone was struggling with it, it was the hardest song on the record for everybody, and for no reason he just walks up and just fuckin’ kills it, I couldn’t believe it. It was mind-blowing. I feel like you have to be kind of big-brained to play it, but you also have to have the tiniest brain known to man to nail it in one take.
[all laughing]
GL: Thaaank… You? I think? [laughing]
AA: He just told you you had a big brain and a tiny brain, I don’t have any idea how to take that. [laughs]
TW: [laughing] You got a regular ass brain, bro!!
AA: Just a couple folds, that’s it. [laughing]
TW: Yeah, you had to go full primal, straight monkey mode… To do that in one take. [laughs]
Anyway, I love every song on the record equally, but I think, objectively, “Uncoil” is the best song on the record, just because everyone has a good time playing it. When we play it together it’s just cohesive and fun, so it translates well live. It’s also the most-played song that we have.
As far as, like, my personal favorite, it’s not even necessarily one song. I’ve also heard a couple people say this, including Wyatt, which is also really cool - “Portrait” into “Marion,” like, that song into the next one, it’s just perfect, to me. When we finished out “Portrait” in the studio, Frank [Bryant] was doing something with the string, he was, like, bending it and giving it some kind of vibrato… and it was carrying that whispery, echo-y reverb you hear in between the song, and he was just doing it to do it, it wasn’t intentional. I was like, “Wait a second! Hold up.” We made him do it again, and it became the transition between those songs, and as soon as “Marion” came in after we tracked it, it was probably the most intense goosebumps, chills, that I had ever gotten. I was like, “Holy shit.” So that’s a personal favorite for me.
AA: I agree. When I was first listening to the record, I was on a long drive to Springfield, Illinois, just driving through the middle of nowhere, but my fuckin’ eyes were glazing over, and when I got to that part, I was like… “Hold on, rewind that,” and sat up so I could pay better attention to it. [laughs] It was awesome.
TW: Hell yeah. Dude, Springfield, Illinois, also - dope place.
GL: Very dope place.
AA: Big agree. It was my first show down there. I’m sad I missed you guys down there, I knew the show was gonna be crazy.
TW: Dude. Show rocked. One of my favorite shows I’ve played in recent memory.
AA: What’s one of your favorite moments from recording Deliberate Revolver?
TW: Oh, god. There's a good bit of it that is kind of blurry to me, because it was in the midst of me having what Wyatt calls “the sleepy ha-ha’s…”
AA: [laughs] Is that, like, when you start getting delirious and weird ‘cause you’re too tired?
TW: Yes. [laughs] I would get mad giggly or whatever and just, like, everything that would happen was funny to me. But I have a couple of moments. One was, I forget what the reason was, I think it’s ‘cause we finished something, but Gage decided he was gonna shotgun a seltzer water… and that shit just came right back up! [laughing]
GL: [laughing] Well, what had happened was… I had previous success in doing it without making a mess, and I was like, “Fuck it, I’m gonna do it again.” So, I went to go pierce the can, we were all listening to something, I took a couple steps back, punctured my hole in it, and went to go crack the can… And it just shot and hit the ceiling, the floor. I’m pretty sure it was a lime or lemon La Croix. It just splattered all over myself - it was water, so I wasn’t worried about the mess - but I just had immediate regret. Everyone looks at me, and Wyatt goes, “What are you doing?!” It wasn’t even that he was necessarily mad in his tone, it was just, like, “The hell is wrong with you? You have thousands of dollars of gear, your gear, on the floor below you… And you decide, ‘Let me just chug this water. Spill it everywhere.’”
TW: [laughs] There was also a board - Wyatt has a tiny whiteboard - and I forget, someone was struggling with a take, and, as previously discussed, I had written a bulk of the guitars. So someone was struggling with a take at some point, and Wyatt pulls out his little whiteboard, and he writes at the top of it: “Five Tries Until Papa Steps In.”
[all laughing]
TW: It was a tally board with five spaces on it, and, essentially, how it works… You got five tries, and if you mess up five times in a row, then you have to hand the guitar to me. [laughs] My thing was, it’s not even that it was happening that often - it was more so that now there’s this pressure. So things sped up a little bit after that! [laughs]
GL: I was gonna cite the seltzer incident… I kinda wanna include this. At the end of one of the days, either the first or second day, we had to have everyone disperse out. I went back to Tyler’s, and I think Jake came with us. Austin and Frank went to Wyatt’s, and they’re all hanging out, drinking a little bit. And Frank was taking shots of tequila, and Wyatt’s like, “Alright, I’m gonna go to bed.” Frank’s getting him to take one more shot, and one more shot, and Wyatt’s like, “Alright man, I gotta go to bed.” Eventually, it just got out of hand, Wyatt went to sleep, got up in the morning, felt terrible, and woke up, grumbling around the house about it, and texted Tyler - “FUCKIN’ FRANK. I WANT TO THROW HOT ROCKS AT THIS MOTHERFUCKER.”
[all laughing]
GL: I remember being in the car with Tyler as we were driving up to the studio, and he just started cackling reading his phone, and he read us this, and it was just immediate, uproarious laughter in the car. Just the tone of that message.
TW: He was just like, “Fuuuck Frank. I’m gonna throw hot rocks at him.” That shit is so funny. [laughs]
AA: The deliberateness of that. Like, going out in the sun to find them, or warming up the rocks and shit. [laughs]
GL: I want to pelt you. I don’t want to throw rocks at you, I want to pelt you. [laughs]
AA: I’m boiling water, I’m putting rocks in. I’m thinking of how much I hate you the entire time.
GL: Also, I have to say… during the recording of the record, during down periods, I just so happened to start talking to my current significant other during the recording of the record, so… Yaaay, we got the record done, and then… you never know. Doors open, doors close. Anyways.
(Source)
AA: How did you end up putting out coffee beans as merch?
GL: I definitely mentioned to the group, “We should do a coffee cup.” We all love coffee. And then, when we were on the road, embarking up to California, we were making our way out there, and Jake was working on the merch spread… I think he just reached out to a previous contact, a coffee shop he worked with in South Carolina. And, thinking of this merch spread, he was like, “Yo, we should do coffee beans, I have a contact.” We did a blend, and arrived at the name “Common Ground.” Of all the merch on the record release spread, other than the work shirt, we all agree… Yeah. we’re all behind this one.
TW: I feel like we’re all coffee people. I’ve been in a few bands where it’s like, “Hey, we should put out a coffee!” But it’s never all that realistic, because you kind of have to be connected with somebody. And it just so happened that Jake was connected with someone - a previous client of his, Sightsee Coffee, down in Charleston. They were cool enough to be like, “Yeah! We could send you guys beans.” We already have bags and labels, Nick [Acosta] from New Morality has already started labeling them. All we have to do is get the beans, put ‘em in the bag, and ship ‘em out!
AA: If a band came to your area and asked for places to go - restaurant, coffee shop, a cool park, whatever - what would be your pick?
TW: Little Goat. If you come to Delaware, my first answer is always gonna be Little Goat. That’s my favorite coffee shop. As far as food and stuff, I’m still trying to figure all that shit out, so I don’t have a great answer.
If you’re in South Carolina, my favorite two spots are Scratch N’ Spin - a record and comic shop - and Drip Coffee. They’re in the Five Points, downtown area. Those are always the two spots me and my bands go to, because you can get awesome coffee - and then Scratch N’ Spin is kind of an unknown gem, I feel like. Everyone always just goes to Papa Jazz, which is the more known record shop, but Scratch N’ Spin is the place to go.
@gagexoxox #Baltimore Cortado Trials Episode II : Sophomore Coffee on Maryland Ave. #coffee #review #espresso ♬ Coffee - LoFi Hip Hop
GL: Obviously, I make a point of trying to find vegan and coffee options everywhere I go on tour. It’s become a hobby of mine. At least, for Baltimore, assuming someone’s trying to get some good grub and a good cup of coffee, I’m gonna get them up early in the morning. No sleeping in, we gotta go, we gotta get a cup now. I’m gonna take ‘em down to Sophomore Coffee. If they’re for some reason closed, fallback would be Ceremony Coffee. You can always get a nice cup of coffee there, maybe a pastry.
If they’re looking to eat, I’d take ‘em to one of my vegan options… My favorite right about now is Pitamore. That’s a falafel and shawarma spot - get a platter, get a side pita, get an order of fresh-fried fries, you spend $15, and you got more food than you know what to do with.
Attractions in Baltimore - if you skate, you go to Hampden Skatepark, if you want records, you go to Celebrated Summer, or Sound Garden… If you’re just looking to see stuff, obviously, going all around Baltimore is great. Don’t go to the Inner Harbor, fuck that. You spend the night in the city, you wanna get a drink - I don’t drink, but if you wanna hang out at the bar… I am slightly biased, you go to Ottobar. More than likely, you’re gonna run into someone you know, you’re just gonna have a good time, there’s usually a show happening downstairs, you can’t go wrong.
Tour flyer
AA: Any future plans you’d like to share?
TW: We’re doing a release tour with Broken Vow next year in January. That’ll be very fuckin’ sick. Happy to be keeping it in the New Morality Zine family.
AA: Any last words?
TW: I personally got nothin’ to shout out at this specific moment, except for Nick, as always. Nick has been doing such an awesome job handling the record and stuff, as I expected him to, because he’s been awesome with us the entire time we’ve been working with him.
GL: Shoutout New Morality Zine, as well as Hold It Down Booking for helping with the tour. I don’t care if this is corny, shoutout everybody for listening to the record. I know when we were recording it we were all like… We knew people would listen. If this didn’t do anything, or didn’t make waves, we’re still gonna be proud of it. But the reception has been absolutely incredible, and I couldn’t have asked for anything more. Thank you to everybody for listening, and shoutout Resonating.
TW: Yeah, shoutout to Resonating, thank you for doing this. Sorry it took us so long to get our shit together. [laughs]
AA: Dude, no worries at all. I knew it would come eventually. I trusted you, Tyler. And you’re here now!
TW: Well, that’s where you fucked up.
[all laughing]
I’d like to thank Excide one more time for their patience - I had a ton of fun doing this interview with them! You can keep up with the band below via social media:
Instagram | Twitter | Bandcamp | Facebook
Additionally, if you’re from my area, make sure you come see Excide play with Broken Vow, Instill, Absolute Truth, and Ashtray at SubT Downstairs in Chicago, IL, on January 16th, 2023. Going to be an awesome show!
Listen to Deliberate Revolver via Spotify below.
-Angie
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