Interview by Rachel Jablonski
When you meet the guys in Evergreen Terrace, you would never think them to be part of a wild, hardcore group both on and off stage. Aside from tattoos covering arms and legs, the mild mannered clan is just your average group of guys – a lively, sarcastic, funny bunch. There’s guitarist Josh James, very vocal and sarcastic, drummer Kyle Mims, pretty down to earth and matter-of-fact-like, and vocalist Andrew Carey, a more subdued character with a good sense of humor who after the interview talked to me about things like missing his mom and writing poetry. But then you get them on stage and wow how the tables turn. Josh is scurrying around playing guitar, Kyle is intense and focused, and Andrew is screaming wildly, completely opposite of what my perception would be of him had I never heard Evergreen Terrace. Further, as you talk with the band, you begin to understand their adventurous and wild attributes off stage as well. Commendably, Evergreen Terrace has no reservations in being honest and revealing their true selves.
Rachel: I love your album title [Sincerity is an Easy Disguise in this Business]. What specifically are you referring to with the title?
Josh: The music industry. We’ve found out in the last five years that it’s really easy to get shit on and really hard to find people that are sincere about what they say they’re going to do for you, or even what they say, in the music industry.
Kyle: They don’t care about what the music scene is actually about, they turn it into something different.
Josh: And also bands and kids that go to shows, same thing.
Kyle: Other bands will tell you stuff like, ‘oh we’ll take you out on tour,’ ‘we’ll do this stuff for you,’ and ‘yeah you’re our friend’ and stuff like that, but then when it comes time they’re not there. They don’t help you out.
Rachel: What do you mean by the kids at shows?
Josh: There are a lot of kids that say they’re ‘so hardcore,’ they’re ‘hardcore til death’ and blah blah blah. Then six months later they don’t give a shit about your band, or about any other band, or about hardcore in general, they just care about what’s the latest trend.
Kyle: It’s real funny, you’ll see a lot of these kids who two years ago were flipping out about Evergreen Terrace, which is cool if you’re not as stoked about the band as you once were, but when you see them standing on the side of the stage or in the back pretending like they’ve never heard the band or don’t give a shit, yet you see them every now and then, when that certain part comes on, you’ll see them look around and start mouthing the lyrics.
Josh: They don’t want to get caught. They’re afraid to like what the like.
Kyle: It’s funny.
Rachel: Where do you get the best response from kids?
Josh: The East Coast and West Coast is awesome, the Southeast is amazing. I mean always the weirdest places for us are like the Midwest, like here, and Texas. Everywhere else is awesome. We’re definitely thankful for it. Canada is pretty good; we’ve been to Australia and that was awesome, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico. We’re taking over the world…
Andrew: One country at a time.
Rachel: Though scarce, there is some acoustic guitar on the album like in “Dogfight,” “I Say You He Dead,” and the ending track. I like it, it adds something. Are you interested in incorporating more acoustic stuff in the future?
Kyle: Maybe, not necessarily acoustic guitar, but just whatever sounds good, whatever’s cool.
Josh: We put that on there because Craig was like ‘check out this song I wrote.’ We said, ‘hey that’s awesome, everyone else should hear it as well.’ Whenever we write songs and decide what does and does not go on an album, it isn’t like ‘oh this will sell a record’ or ‘this will be better than having something else’ or ‘kids like this more,’ it’s just like we like it so we’re going to do it because that’s why we started a band, so we could have fun. Right, Drew?
Andrew: Yeah.
Rachel: What is the song “I Say You He Dead” about?
Josh: The title or the lyrics or the song?
Rachel: The song in general.
Josh: It is the title of a short story that Drew wrote.
Andrew: A little short story I wrote, I Say You He Dead. It’s not even a short story; it’s like a poem actually, but…
Rachel: What’s it about?
Andrew: It’s about someone getting killed. [laugh]
Josh: Drew used to get abused by his…
Andrew: It’s about my mom killing my dad.
Josh: My dad boned his mom.
[laugh]
Andrew: That’s basically it, just a short story I wrote in about 5 seconds. Then they came in and I read it to them…
Josh: And we laughed our asses off.
Andrew: And they wrote the music to it and it electrified.
Josh: That song was made in five minutes total.
Andrew: Yeah it was, but it’s one of my favorite songs on the album.
Rachel: What does Mexico have to do with the song?
Josh: That’s usually where you go after you kill someone I believe, right Drew? There or the Cayman Islands.
Kyle: That’s where people go to die too.
Andrew: Mexico just has a better ring than Cayman Islands.
Rachel: [laugh]
Kyle: Yeah people usually go to Mexico.
Andrew: ‘And then she drove to the Cayman Islands.’
Rachel: [laugh]
Josh: ‘She got into her car and she drove to the Cayman Islands.’ Yeah you can really only drive to Mexico or Canada so…
Andrew: You don’t want to go to Canada; you can’t really hide out in Canada. I guess you could, but that’s not really cool.
Rachel: [laugh] That’s true. You’ve been around for 4 yearsish?
Josh: Five and a half.
Rachel: What’s been the driving force that has kept you guys going?
Josh: Just having fun. Not growing up and getting a real job.
Rachel: [laugh]
Andrew: I think it’s kind of more, kind of like a weird addiction. Sometimes when you do shitty shows or a shitty tour you feel real bummed about it, but then when you get off those awesome tours and get done doing those awesome shows you can’t stop. You can’t stop touring. Sometimes you think, ‘oh man maybe I should go try to get a real job because this is paying the bills, but it’s not going to help me retire or anything like that.’ But then again, on top of that you’re like, ‘I don’t want to stop because I’m having so much fun’ and there’s a big group of people having fun with you at the same time.
Josh: It’s not something that you can go to school for or be like, ‘yeah I want to do this when I grow up.’ It’s something that just happens and if you’re lucky enough that you can pay your bills off of it, then just do it. You’re only going to live once, might as well have as much fun as possible. And on top of that even if you are on a shitty tour and you call home and talk to your friend, you call him at two in the morning and he’s like, ‘hello, oh I gotta be up at six to work for 10 hours.’
Kyle: Yeah, if it’s two in the morning and you’re on a shitty tour and you call them, they’re asleep and have to go to work and you’re sitting in somebody’s house that you never have met before or in a hotel room with five or six of your best friends. And you’re like, ‘what are you going to do tonight?’ And they say, ‘oh well I have to go to work so…’
Rachel: Evergreen Terrace is in reference to the street that The Simpsons live on. Why did you choose this particular aspect of The Simpsons?
Josh: Because Moe’s Tavern didn’t sound right.
Rachel: [laugh]
Josh: I don’t know we were just sitting at Wendy’s and our old bass player was like ‘Evergreen Terrace would be a cool name for the band.’ And we were like ok.
Andrew: Sounds better than The Backpack Boys.
Rachel: The Backpack Boys?
Josh: Like five hours after our very first practice we went and played a show…
Rachel: Oh my gosh…
Josh: Yeah and so we played this show and Drew had a backpack on, I think our drummer had a backpack on too. So we didn’t have a name or anything, we had just written two songs just five hours earlier and Drew was just like, ‘oh we’re the backpack boys or something.’ As a JOKE, obviously, and so we were like well I think we should find a real name.
Rachel: That’s funny. You were recently supposed to play Hellfest, the big event in Trenton, NJ. What happened? Why was the entire show cancelled?
Josh: Drew, why don’t you take this one dude?
Andrew: Yeah last weekend, I think it had to do with the hurricane or something… hurricane the shit hit the fan.
[laugh]
Josh: Yeah the people that put on Hellfest, they didn’t put down a deposit for the venue, didn’t put down a deposit for the PA, didn’t put down a deposit for the catering, didn’t put down a deposit for any of the bands. They disappointed 180 bands and…
Kyle: Yeah it hurt a lot of kids who flew overseas, it hurt a lot of bands financially, it hurt a lot of… it’s like one of my favorite times of the year, honestly it hurt my feelings! Cause you get so stoked to see all these bands for three days and you see random people around beforehand and they say, ‘are you going to Hellfest’ and you say, ‘yeah’ and it’s like holy shit everyone’s gonna be there.
Josh: Yeah, it’s like a big party. You see all of your friends that you haven’t seen in the last year. Around like 1,000 kids flew from overseas, you know, like spending anywhere from one grand to three grand on a ticket and then they get here and it’s cancelled? It’s fucking bullshit. They just lost a few thousand dollars and they’re stuck in New Jersey.
Kyle: Yeah, Jersey isn’t that cool, it kinda smells.
Josh: It smells like shit.
Kyle: I think the bummer thing about it is that several years ago Hellfest was strictly hardcore bands, some punk rock bands, stuff like that. Ya know they started adding all these extra things every year like a skate park and all these… whatever. It was more special when it was more of a basic hardcore thing. We don’t need it to have all this extra stuff.
Josh: Yeah they don’t need to spend $80,000 on an arena to have a show at.
Andrew: They don’t need to compete with the Warped Tour.
Josh: They don’t need to charge $100 per ticket.
Kyle: Maybe it’s not the bands, well our, business to bitch about it because we’re not the ones who are putting it on, but…
Josh: I think it is our business to bitch about it because the bands and the kids are what make the fest. Two people fucked up and they ruined it for thousands of other people. No sweat off their back, they’re just like ‘oops it’s cancelled, we’re sorry. We’re going to make up a lie and say it was conditions beyond our control.’ They want to lie about it to a bunch of people, but they didn’t lose any money, not anymore than anyone else did.
Rachel: You have a video for “New Friend Request” off the new album?
Josh: It’s brand new. We just saw the final cut yesterday. The video premiers at CMJ in September and then on Fuse and MTV2 hopefully later on this year.
Rachel: What goes on in the video?
Josh: You have to wait! Bestiality.
Kyle: There’s a chain saw and blood.
Rachel: What can we expect coming up from you guys? What are you looking forward to?
Kyle: Eating the food that we’re supposed to get because we’re all starving.
Josh: That and we’re going to Europe.