“When we started this band, we really wanted it to be a throwback, a screamo kind of band, and a lot of our influences are bands like LaQuiete, Raein, Daitro, there’s a lot of European bands of that genre that we’re totally influenced by…”.

It’s nice to hear Jeremy Bolm, Touché Amoré’s singer, talk about his own history; it’s fun when he talks about the records he bought on tour and it’s good to see him on a stage, putting order in his band short and fast attack. Everything shows how much he’s into what he’s doing, and that’s no small thing in the current underground scene.

SD: A tour in South East Asia, that looks like a good starting point…
TA: It was crazy, absolutely crazy! There’s such a huge demand for bands to go over there and play and they don’t really get it that often, there’s such an appreciation there when you actually make the trip. I think that since our band started, anytime we posted anything online, like “we’re going on an US tour”, or something like that, someone for Malasya or Indonesia would come out and say “come to Malasya!”, every single time! For like years now! So when we finally made it, we felt really good that we finally could make it happen. We were only there for about a week, we did four shows, and it was the hardest travel of any tour I’ve ever done, the longest and hardest week. The flights in between were all just like chaos with baggage fees and having to pay for the different visas, and then to get from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Jogjakarta it was supposed to be a 12 hours overnight drive that turned into a 17 hours drive and it was terrifying, no rules, drive as fast as you can, slamming on the brakes… I’m so happy we did it but it was horrid!

SD: I know you’re beating your own record of shows played in one year!
TA: Yeah, when we get home we play just two shows and after that last show we’ll beat last year shows, 166 shows…

SD: Ahah, I just happen to love one line of a song of yours that says “no ties, no roots, I’m fine” (Home Away From Here), and I was wondering if it’s more true than ever!
TA: I wrote that record in 2011 and we spent 2009 and 2010 mostly touring, and you become more confortable with that than your home, which is what all Parting the Sea… was about. Like finding comfort in distance, realizing that being on tour feels more home than being at home, relations that crumble… but you know this is the longest tour we had now and in a way I’ve come to appreciate home a lot more. As much as I still love touring and things like that, I guess that we’re all pretty excited for a break. Not to say that our band is going on a break, but we need to relax! We’re home for a couple of months to summer on and off, we hadn’t had a summer at home in California, which is like the best place for summer, we haven’t experienced that for years! It’s like “Man, I miss the food, I miss everything”.

SD: Where do you actually live?
TA: Three of us live in Burbank, which is pretty much Los Angeles, it’s not considered Los Angeles county because it’s kind of snobbish, then Nick lives in Silverlake and our drummer lives on the west side near Santa Monica. When I get home I have a girlfriend, and I hadn’t had a girlfriend since the band started cause I just don’t want to put anybody thru that, we’re gone all the time, it’s not fair to them. Last time I went home I finally met someone who was worth it, it’s funny cause we’ve been together 7 months and I’ve seen her for just three of them! So I’m pretty exicted, that’s probably the best test to see if you wanna be my girlfriend! “Hello, see you in fucking four months!”

SD: Ok, we know what the last record was about, do you already know what’s happening in the next one?
TA: When we get home, we’ll go to Japan for the first time in January and after that we won’t tour at all until we have our new record actually out. Which means we’ll probably be home for 6/7 months, to write the record, record the record and then it has to come out which takes forever. Which is good because we want people to want to see us again. We have been to Europe 4 times since Parting The Seas has come out, there might be kids still excited to see us if we come back in two months, but we want them to be like an actual “Hey!”. So we’ll come back when we have a new records, and we’ve written like three songs since we were home during the summer and it’s definitely like a big growth in the band, most of the songs are about three minutes long…

SD: Suites for you!
TA: Yeah, most of the songs are about a minute and a half normally! And it’s coming naturally, it’s not we’re saying “we need to write longer songs”, it’s just a natural progression which I’m excited about cause you know we may have not to play forty songs every night! On this tour we play 22 songs…

SD: Will you go back to a more traditional song writing?
TA: Verse-chorus? No, no, we just continue to do what we feel works. When it comes to lyrics, I’m already in a way kind of panic because I’m happier now than I’ve been since the band started, I’ve spent this band career writing self deprecating stuff and I’m not gonna write a third record of the same things and by the way who wants to hear that?

SD: For what I understand you don’t have the same reasons you had…
TA: I’m not gonna fake it, I’m not gonna fake sad, fake this or fake that, there’s no point, that’s embarrassing. So I really have to figure out what I’m gonna write about and in a way I’m really excited about it, but I’m also I’m kinda nervous about it, it’s gonna be a challenge! Like, I’m a huge fan of Manchester Orchestra, they’re more an indie rock band from the States, and I had the pleasure of hanging out with the singer, I met him in New York, spent some time talking and stuff and I punished him a little bit about how much I like his band…, and they’re also working on the new record and the same things he’s nervous about is what I’m nervous about, like concepts and what to write about. I would say “I’m a lot happier now”, and he said “me too, I married the love of my life, I’ve bands that I’m proud of, what do I have to complain about?” and then he said something that’s been in my head since then, he said “It’s hard to write content” which is the most straight honest thing in the world, it’s really difficult. A lot can happen between here and when we actually start writing, hopefully nothing too bad…

SD: You’ve mostly always stuck to more personal stuff, would you like to “be able” somehow to openly write about events, news, stuff happening?
TA: It depends on what inspires me. On our first record we had a song about pro-gay marriage, those are some of the most direct lyrics I’ve ever written cause I was very driven, something I very much feel strongly about, but we’re not a political band, if something drives me then I wanna write about it. There has just been this huge tragedy in Connecticut, the shooting, obviously there’s a bunch of reasons to write a song about gun control which potentially could be something I feel very strongly about. Like I don’t wanna see control on guns, I don’t wanna see guns at all anymore, but obviously that’s a fairy tale and it’s not gonna happen. That’s like a political issue I could see myself getting strongly about…

SD: Did you vote on the last election, and which were the main topics you cared about in your decision?
TA: I voted, but to be completely honest with you I wasn’t that informed, I’ve been on tour, I wasn’t really keeping up, my main thing was the President election, that’s where I focused on. There’s a few that I sort of skimmed over, but there was stuff that was just so weird, like the use of condoms in porn (see Measure B, which states that in porn movies shot in Los Angeles it’s mandatory the use of condoms), the fact that you have to really vote on that. Shouldn’t it be a porn industry thing? It’s just almost kind of gnarly that that could be something the entire US has to vote on, I felt people would be offended just reading that, it was pretty shocking… A lot of things is shocking, like there was one about not listing which ingredients are in certain foods, and there’s people that say “I dont need to know what that is” and voted against it. Don’t you really want to know the ingredients of what’s in the food, why would you vote against that? Like, you wanna be ignorant to that? Nothing surprises me in the States. When something really stupid gets voted on properly, it’s like “America?”

SD: What’s happening with Secret Voice, your own records label?
TA: I started the label but I’ve only put out one seven inch so far that came out in March this year cause we’ve always been on tour. I have 5 or 6 records in the works that should come out next year and a couple of books ideas. One of the releases is a side project band that I did with random friends from other bands. All together in a room, the four us, they may or not know each other, but it was a matter of getting random friend in a room, see how many songs we could write in one day and then we recorded them the next day. The band is called Hesitation Wounds, I sing, Neeraj from the Hope Conspiracy and Suicide File plays guitar, Steve Scuba who plays bass in Trap Them plays bass, Jay Weinberg who yesterday actually quit Against Me plays drums. It’s the four of us and it’s just fast and heavy hardcore.

SD: Besides the drummer, you seem to have similar tastes…
TA: But Jay favorite’s band is Converge, he has a pretty wide range of bands he listens to but when it comes to hardcore he’s pretty much on the same page. We knew we wouldn’t be really really weird. Then I’m doing a split seven inch with a band called Drug Church with Patrick Kindlon from Self Defense Family, it’s his other band and they’re fucking awesome and it’s a split with this band Liars Club which is the singer from Single Mothers, the first band that I actually put out. A few of the guys in Alpinist started this band called Jungbluth and I wanna do something with them. My drummer has a solo called Dad Punchers, and I’d like to to do a split seven inch with them and it might be Cheap Girls or Fake Problems. At this point I’m sort of reaching out to friends bands, Hesitation Wounds and Drug Church will be the next ones, and I’m doing a band called Dangers, a 7inch with them that’s been in the works for the entire year.

SD: Dangers’ Messy, Isn’t It? Is an incredible record…
TA: I do agree, they’re very slow because the bass player was in San Francisco, Justin has nine hundred bands…, it’s gonna be a split release with Vitriol. For the books, the singer from Tigers Jaw is supposed to be writing something, I don’t know what to expect, and the singer from Self Defense Family is gonna write a self-help book which is gonna be hilarious.

SD: Is there any band you use as a reference in taking your own decisions?
TA: We pretty much run our band saying “would Converge do that?”, if something doesn’t seem a good idea, you ask “would they do that?” and that’s a pretty good way cause I feel they never fucked up, the made mostly great decisions, we look up to them cause they’re like our favorite collective band. There’s a lot of other bands, like Thursday for example, I met them on the first West Coast tour and became friend with them and till they broke up they were the same guys, they were always the nicest people, they always cared about their friends, there was never any part of them that was not sincere, I think that’s the most important thing you should never lose. Sincerity is the more important thing when it comes to the drama of music because people like to say our music is very honest but you need to actually show, don’t fake anything, do what makes you happy and never forget why you started doing it.

http://toucheamore.bandcamp.com/
http://toucheamore.com/

(Txt by Marco Capelli x Salad Days Mag – All Rights Reserved)