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So do you guys only have three members now and will you be staying a three piece? N: At the moment, yeah. We have our great friend Tom who has been jamming with us touring but for now yeah, we are a three piece. Cool, can you guys give me your background? N: About 4.5 years. We just came together through the Long Island music scene. Our old bands used to play shows together. Those bands kind of dismembered around the same time and we were all still into playing music so we found each, the rest is history. Actually, we met up in the middle of a field randomly one day, we ran toward each other That sounds like a Wes Anderson movie. N: Yes, and we were holding our instruments and we started singing in the forest (laughs) So did you guys all grow up in Long Island? N: Yes! All of us born and raised. Oh wow, how do you think that had any influence on your sound? Long Island has some pretty distinct music coming out of there. N: Absolutely. Unintentionally I guess. We all grew up going to shows and watched Long Island bands blow up and do their thing. Especially when we play out of state, you don’t realize it necessarily at first but people always say, “You sound so Long Island” whenever we play in other states.” Are there specific artists then that you guys grew up on and any from Long Island in particular that influenced you? N: Well Ian is a huge Brand New fan and Jordan grew up with The Chili Peppers. A lot not from Long Island – Incubus and Thrice.
I have to ask, why don’t you have vowels in your name? N: Simple: google. But really, we were called Neighbors spelled out but when we went to make a Myspace 4.5 or 5 years ago, it was taken so we were just going to take out the vowels for the links. Then we recorded our EP and the day we finished tracking a press release for another band went our called Neighbors, spelled out. So we were like, “sh*t” and we were gonna change it but the name had already stuck with us so we kind just decided to take the vowels out. Thought it might be interesting, now it’s a trend though. You released a single in August and released an album last year. Are you guys just continuously writing material? N: Yes, always. That’s kind of the plan. I feel like this day and age, spending two years on an album and touring for a year, and that whole cycle isn’t as relevant anymore. Not across the board totally but at least for bands of our size. So, I feel like the goal for us is just to continuously write and when we feel like putting something out, we put something out. Do you guys have another album planned? N:Yeah, sort of. We are writing and recording as we are writing. We are working right now with a producer named Mike Sapone, he did all the Brand New/Taking Back Sunday records. He’s a big Long Island dude and he kind of works like that. We send him demos and he will be like, “I love these two, let’s do these two now.” It’s gradual. It’s a little refreshing for us to do that because the record we released last year, we wrote all these songs and moved into a mansion to record it live. It was an abandoned mansion. It was like a museum, it was William Cullen Bryant’s old estate. We rented it from the county; seventy acres of land, on a lake. Spent like 300 bucks on a permit and that was it.
local wolves magazine // 81