DEAREASTERNPROM - ISSUE TWO

DEAR EASTERN PROM. ISSUE TWO D ay l i g h t SINGLE MOTHERS Goodtime Boys C r e at i v e A d u lt S tay R a d S k at e s Luke Pownall

D E E P

E A R A S T R N / ROM

ISSUE TWO WRITTEN AND DESIGNED

BY MATTHEW VERNON A NY ENQUIR I ES TO: M ATTHEWV ER NON@LIVE .c om. a u

DAYLIGHT 4 GOODTIME BOYS 10 LUKE POWNALL 16 CREATIVE ADULT 26 STAY RAD SKATES 34

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TAYLOR MADISON - GUITAR/VOCALS

Daylight are a band from Doylestown, PA, USA. Earlier this year they released their first LP ‘Jar’ on Run For Cover records.

I spoke to Taylor Madison about the band, and his artwork.

Jar has been out for a couple of months now.

How has the reception been so far? Has it been different to any previous releases?

It seems to be good. I think more people are getting into the band now, compared to previous records.

But I think that has a lot to do with the fact that we tour a lot more now than we did when our earlier records came out.

Daylight came out to Australia in 2009, early in your career as a band. I’m gonna make a broad generalisation and say that most of the people that listen to you guys now probably weren’t at those shows, which is completely understandable as you were relatively unknown at the time. How did that tour come about, and did you enjoy it? or has it turned you off Australia completely?

Well, we knew full-well going into that tour that it was a financially dumb idea. We didn’t care.

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Someone (who turned out to be a real son of a bitch) asked if we wanted to tour there. None of us had ever been to Australia, so we were like “fuck it!” and we went anyway. Some of the shows were pretty wack, which we fully expected. But to our surprise, some people actually knew who we were and came out to our shows. It was crazy. One of the best feelings I can recall having in my life. I love Australia and hope to return again.

I feel that there is a definitive shift in the musical style across all of your releases, with no two sounding alike. Do you purposely try to progress and change with each release or is it a matter of how you’re feeling at the time?

Yes and no. I personally love it when bands have a bunch of records that don’t all sound the same. I feel like bands shouldn’t always play it safe and do the same exact thing for every record. But at the same time, we never consciously changed how we wrote songs or the kinds of music we liked. We still like the

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same music we all liked when we started the band and we all still write the same way. I think we just figured out how we wanted our songs to sound, and how to achieve that sound.

Between tours you work on drawings and paintings for flyers, album art etc. What else do you and the other guys in Daylight do in the downtime between tours?

Well, it changes from time to time for everyone, but Joe usually does odd-job stuff, like landscaping and stuff like that. Jake records bands and is a part time flower delivery boy. Zack works at a guitar store.

Do you incorporate any of your artwork into anything for Daylight?

Yeah, sometimes. Joe and I pretty much make every shirt design and album art/layout the we’ve ever done. I kind of wish I contributed my art a little more, but there just haven’t been that many places

it would fit.

Are you planning on taking your art further than just commissions? any special projects on the horizon?

I’ve never really thought about it. I am kind of ashamed to admit that it’s sort of rare these days for me to just draw or paint for the sake of doing it. I plan to try pick up and do a few original paintings to auction off for my brother’s charity. So we’ll see how that goes.

What’s next? Will we see Daylight out here in Australia within the year?

We’re about to leave for a 6 week tour with O’brother and Native. We’re playing Fest after that, and then I’m not really sure what the plan is. And yes, we will more than likely be back in Australia within a year. Thanks for the interview!

facebook.com/daylightpa runforcoverrecords.com Photos courtesy of Danielle Parsons dressingcold.tumblr.com You can check Taylor’s work out on his blog taylorrobertmadison.tumblr.com

Poison City Records have released a lot of great records this year, and Apart From This’ debut fulllength - In Gloom - is the best so far. Recorded at Three Phase Studios with the widely renowned Sam Johnson (Arrows, The Gifthorse, The Smith Street Band) in late 2012, Apart From This have really come into their own.

APART FROM THIS IN GLOOM 2013, POISON CITY RECORDS

Much of the pop punk leanings of previous EP ‘Another Day, Another Fight’ are gone on this release, with the band opting for a sound more rooted in alt rock and grunge, similar to that of contemporaries Make Do and Mend. However, that isn’t to say that some parts of the record aren’t destined for singalongs: the chorus of ‘Small Town Syndrome’ in particular. A highlight of the record is the bands Brand New-esque ‘quiet-loud-quiet-loud’ formula, switching between them with apparent ease; a testament to the songwriting abilities of the band.

The only real issue with this record is that the songs are all somewhat similar - not that they’ve written the same song 12 times, just that there are certain elements spread over almost every song.

It isn’t hard to see this band becoming Australia’s premier alternative rock band, with high-profile local supports, multiple interstate trips and a fast, frantic live show being just some of the things this band has going for it. Considering that this is the bands debut full length record, it’s hugely impressive.

Certainly a band to watch in 2013 and beyond.

Review by Michael Hannay http://mchlhnny.tumblr.com/

LEIGH - BASS

Goodtime Boys are a band from the UK. They’re signed to Bridge Nine Records.

I looked them up after I saw their merch designs on the B9 store and figured if their merch was that good, their music must be pretty good too - and it was.

First up, Who am I speaking with, and who are Goodtime Boys for people that have never listened to you?

able to put out records on the same label as bands like American Nightmare, Panic, Champion, Have Heart etc is truly amazing for us.

I’m Leigh and I play bass in GTB. We’re an emo/ hardcore band from various places in the UK.

I’m a designer, so naturally I’m drawn to bands with good art and design, and yours is some of the best I’ve seen. Who does most of your work?

Was it important to you as a band to have great art and design?

You’re signed to the US label, Bridge Nine Records. Has being based in a different country affected the band in anyway?

I don’t think it has. Bridge Nine have had a couple of non-US bands on the label in the past, like Miles Away from Perth and Dead Swans from the UK. Modern technology means it’s easy for us to speak to the B9 guys whenever we need to and I guess that us being on B9 means that people in places we’ve never played before have the chance to hear our music, which is one of the reasons we signed to them. The main reason for signing with them, though, was simply that we are all huge fans of the majority of the records the label has put out. To be

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Our guitarist, Sam, does all of the artwork for our records and merch. It’s great having him do it because he’s awesome at his job, firstly, and secondly because he gets what the band is about and interprets that visually. He does work for other bands and labels too. You can check him out here: http://iamsamcreative.co.uk/

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Has there been a stand out moment for you as a band?

What’s next for Goodtime Boys?

I can’t really speak for the others in the band, but I would say that there isn’t one single stand out moment for me. Through being in this band I have been able to tour a lot and see a lot of cool places.

This year alone I’ve been able to travel around the US and see loads of places I’ve always wanted to go to, like Washington D.C., New York City and Flordia.

Some of the basement shows on that tour really stood out for me.

We’re currently writing our first full length. At this point, we’ve got around half of it written. We are about to go in to the studio to record a song for a split 7” that we’re doing with one of our favourite bands. We’re really excited about it and it’ll be out through my label, Palm Reader Records, towards the end of this year. We then go in to record the full length in November and that will be out on Bridge Nine in the early part of 2014, with a whole bunch of touring to follow after that.

How sick is the new Vanity LP, hey?

Thanks!

Vanity are one of my favourite Australian bands. I’ve really liked the EPs they’ve put out, but this new record is the best thing they’ve done so far. I met Ryan from Vanity when I toured Australia with my other band and I’m hoping to hook up some shows with those guys when GTB get over there (hopefully in the next year or so).

facebook.com/goodtimeboys bridge9.com Photos courtesy of Harry Lawlor harrylawlorphoto.co.uk

It’s easy to pigeonhole a lot of bands into genres; Naive are not one of them. The guitars are reminiscent of early Daylight material, the vocals sound like they could have been lifted from melodic hardcore giants More Than Life; it’s a style popular at the moment, but what do you call that? At any rate, there’s a great degree of influence from both emo and hardcore bands alike, and Naive mix them well.

Immediately following soft intro track ‘Lost’, is the first ‘real’ song on the demo: ‘Broken’. A loud guitar riff, accompanied by crashing drums segues into the first line of the song - ‘I haven’t stopped crying since the day you left, and I don’t think this feeling will ever end.’ this line summarises the lyrical content of the release fairly well; it’s personal and it’s depressing.

NAIVE DEMO 2013, SELF RELEASED

The final song, ‘October’ is the best of the four. It starts out as a mid tempo melodic hardcore song, before dropping both bass and drums and softening considerably. The last forty seconds of the song are the highlight of the demo, at least vocally; the yell-singing is dropped for a more skramz-esque approach and the song benefits greatly from this.

Review by Michael Hannay http://mchlhnny.tumblr.com/

DREW THOMPSON - VOCALS

SINGLE MOTHERS BROKE UP IN 2009 and have been playing shows ever since.

How’d Single Mothers start, and how did you come up with the name?

I honestly don’t remember coming up with the name but I like to pretend it was something like a heaven sent message in a dream or the equivalent of finding a scroll with the meaning of life in a bottle on the shore of a beach somewhere off the Atlantic.

The hardest part of starting a band is getting the name, and I just had it. So when my girlfriend dumped me, I lost my job and my life went to total shit all I had left was this band name sent from hell or heaven and a bar I knew musicians hung out at. Put the pieces together, book a few shows for pressure and Single Mothers became a band, or something like it.

Your lyrics were the first thing that caught my attention when listening to you guys, and in my eyes, set you apart from a lot of bands striving for a similar sound. Where do you draw influence from when writing songs?

That’s a question I don’t like to answer because I don’t know. I’m the kind of person that acts on impulse and instinct way too much, and usually when the boys start ripping whatever comes out first feels right. But I love songwriters like Springsteen, Dylan, Criag Finn, Paul Westerburg, Mike Skinner and Will Scheff. We were never striving for a sound, maybe that’s why it stands out if it does.

The title of this zine, DEAREASTERNPROM, is pulled straight from the lyrics of an American Nightmare song - so of course I have to ask, How was it playing with those guys?

They were really nice and we were very lucky to be a part of that show. Everyone seemed to have a great time, and I know the fans really appreciated them coming to Toronto.

Your latest release came out in 2011, any news on a new release? a full length maybe?

We started recording an album last winter but have scrapped it, and we’re starting again in a couple weeks actually. Should be out early next year.

Last year you sold a physical release, ‘Printed Matter’ - a DIY series that included live recordings and some print matter, that was only available at shows. Could you tell us some more about how that project came to fruition and the reasoning behind it?

We like the idea of being as inclusive as possible.

Printed Matter was conceived with the intention to give friends or fans or whoever a inside look at what it’s like for us on the road, to be sold on the road, to people that come to shows. It’s kind of like an inner circle thing.

Any parting words? if you can be the singer, be the singer.

facebook.com/SINGLEMOTHERSPARTy SINGLEMOTHERSBAND.BANDCAMP.COM Photos courtesy of NATALIA MaRRERO FLICKR.COM/photos/nataliaxmx

LUKEPOWNALL.COM

Luke Pownall is a photographer from Melbourne.

I randomly stumbled upon his blog back in 2010, or something like that, and i’ve been a fan of his work ever since.

LEFT: PHOTO BY MITCH PINNEY MITCHPINNEY.TUMBLR.COM

MICHAEL - GUITAR

Creative Adult are a sick DIY band from California, USA. They are signed to Run for Cover, and release other stuff through their Clique based media outlet, Broke Hatre.

What/Who is Creative Adult and how did it all begin?

Creative Adult is a musical group from the north bay area in California. We began after a few of us had ended our previous band to start a new project.

After much talking back and fourth we decided to ask Scott to sing for the band because I knew he was home and looking to do a project. He was interested so we wrote and recorded a 7’’ called DEAD AIR that we released ourselves on Broke Hatre.

After, we started playing shows, recorded a few more 7’’s and just got done writing our LP which we start recording next week. As of yesterday(8.12.13) it will have been one year since our first show.

Creative Adult is a very DIY band, with your music being released and distributed through your ‘clique based media outlet’ Broke Hatre.

What has been your main influence to keep a lot of your work in-house?

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The inspiration for keeping everything within the confines of our group has been personal. We all want to progress as artists, as leaders, as mediators and as anything else we decide we want to better ourselves in. Broke Hatre has been an easy way to do so. It’s enabled us to be in control of EVERYTHING and ANYTHING. With a few small exceptions, there is nothing that has happened with our band that we weren’t in full control of and we intend to keep it that way.

Creative Adult is a part of other projects, one being Broke Hatre. Tell us about it, and what other projects are you or the other members of Creative Adult involved in?

Broke Hatre is a Clique Based Media Outlet run by us.

We use it as a means to release anything we see fit.

Right now Mike and James are in the midst of their first summer line of clothing and things are great.

We’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of support

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from our friends and that is always encouraging. We also wanted something that we could use to help nurture our friends creative outlets as well; hence the “Clique-based”. We want anyone who is close to us as friends and people to feel like they are a part of of what we are doing. If you check our catalogue of releases you will find some amazing music by close friends of ours and were proud to be a part of it.

We are all so busy its hard to specifically name anything. I don’t want to speak on anyones behalf as far as personal endeavors go~ but I am in another band called NO SIR who just released an LP today. I also work and go to school.

You’re about to start recording your LP. How do you feel about the songs so far?

The songs are the most well thought out songs we’ve written definitely. We went into the writing process with the mindset of writing an LP. The songs

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are longer, more thought out and more diverse.

Per Usual for us its all over the place but somehow the songs relate and connect with each other. We have worked very hard on it and we’re excited to get it recorded and show it to people.

‘Bulls in the Yard’ was released by Run for Cover records. How did that come about? Should we expect your LP to also be released by RFC? We just emailed Jeff about it. I’m not sure if thats usually how things work with them(i hear its not), but scott knows Jeff from his days touring in a hardcore band so I’m sure he was a little more receptive to the idea of someone reaching out about working together.

As a band we are perfectly capable of operating without a label so that gives us a lot of freedom to choose exactly what we want and if we do not get it, we are not sad because nothing is lost. We all talked about RFC and decided they would be the

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label to reach out to. We do not reach out to lots and lots of different people and hope that someone bites. We choose who to reach out to and if they are receptive we are excited, but if theres no response, its ok because we can release our own records, book our own tours and do our own artwork. What I’m saying is we were excited when they were receptive when we reached out about working together.

What are your plans after recording has finished?

We will be doing some short tours in the Fall and Winter. After we plan on doing a full US and Full Europe tour. We’ve also talked about going to Japan and Aus.

After one release with them they’ve exceeded my expectations of what a label should be and I have nothing bad to say. Tom and Jeff are a pleasure to work with to say that least and have been nothing but supportive. S/O to them.

We will definitely be releasing our LP with them.

facebook.com/creativeadult runforcoverrecords.com facebook.com/brokehatre Photos courtesy of Garret Van Brunt relativeminds.tumblr.com

TOMMY B ARTIST / SKATEBOARDER

I discovered Tommy B’s artwork back when he was using the moniker ‘WEAREALLOUTLAWS’.

I fell in love with his laid back, yet extremely dedicated approach to his artwork.

He is now working under the monkier of ‘Stay Rad Skates’ and has launched a clothing label featuring his work.

How did you get into art and when did you start up your We are all Outlaws/Stay Rad stuff?

for my work to be seen rather than just pile up in the studio and collect dust!

I have always drawn stuff for as long as i can remember, but I got into skateboarding when I was about thirteen and took an interest in the deck graphics/company aesthetics and artists like Fos from Heroin, Pete Fowler, French, James Jarvis, Ed Templeton - to name a few and begun emulating their art. I did the whole art college thing too, but it didnt work out for me. But it did open my eyes to the world of fine art and, Artists like Basquiat, David Shirgley, Mathew Shillinglaw and the Chapman brothers. I also got heavily into the world of street art and graffiti, and begun dabbling in that, influenced by Malarky, Neckface, Space Invader etc. I then got a job in a tattoo shop and was drawing tattoos all day long but I soon realised that it wasn’t for me neither. But I guess thats how my artistic style grew (a mixture of graphic art, fine art, street art and tattoo art) and then the WE ARE ALL OUTLAWS blog came about. It was just a platform

Just recently you’ve taken your art and turned it into a clothing label. How’d this decision come about?

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I skate and have done for a long time, and I create images, it just seemed to come hand in hand but its still very much in its infancy, there are a million other clothing brands out there to compete with and only time will tell if it goes anywhere.

If you had to give up skateboarding or art, which one would it be?

That’s a hard one! Probably give up art. It’s skateboarding that really started everything for me.

I can’t just forget about it or throw it away, I owe it!

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What’s your favourite medium to work with?

Usually paint, a friend recently got me into India inks so I’m using them a lot at the moment. To be honest as long as I can make a mark I don’t really mind what I use.

Favourite skater?

Theres so many! but to say one then it has to be without a doubt Mark Gonzalez, he is skateboarding!

If you could collab with any skate brand, who would it be?

Heroin skateboards without a doubt! Fos if your reading!

You seem like on of the hardest working artists.

You’re constantly updating the blog with new work. How do you keep things fresh and come up with new ideas?

When I started a blog under the WEAREALLOUTLAWS monkier my plan was to post something every day, keep it interesting otherwise people will get bored. If I’m posting new shit the whole time hopefully they come back and see what’s new. I started that blog maybe 2/3 years ago and tried to stay true to my original plan! I also try to remove myself from my work and my blog I don’t really want it being associated with me as a person I want it to be about my aesthetic.

Any new shit on the horizon we should keep a look out for?

New clothing drop in a month or so and some cool collab zines and projects that im really stoked on.

We are also trying to film the stay rad skates edit too and I am looking to put on a few more exhibitions as well.

Peace.

stayradskates.tumblr.com facebook.com/wearealloutlaws stayradskates.bigcartel.com Photos courtesy of Stay Rad Skates

deareasternprom.com facebook.com/deareasternpromzine deareasternpromzine.bigcartel.com

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