It’s been about six years since you toured the States. Why such a long break? It was a break from everything, really. We toured a lot on [2009 album[ No More Stories…, and the last tour we did took us to Southeast Asia and places like that. We were a little bit spent, because we had been touring for almost two years, on and off, and we decided to have a little break before we started writing the next one because we never did that. We used to live together, too, so it was just full-on band—everything was the band. Everyone wanted to pursue other things for a while, things that we had thought about doing but never had the time to do. [Then] we played South by Southwest this year, and it was such a great experience and really made us feel like it would be great to come back. We’re super excited to come back to the States. We’re really enjoying touring these days.

You guys are obviously talented musicians, but unlike some other progressive-rock bands, your music remains accessible. How do you keep from overindulging on the technical side? We obviously enjoy some prog-rock, but I don’t like prog-rock when it becomes too virtuoso, when it’s like, “Hear how many notes I can play in a minute.” That doesn’t really connect with me in any way, that just becomes showing off and we’re not interested in that at all. We’re interested in conveying ideas, figuring out new ways of writing and expressing something that’s important to us. That is the drive we have.

Do you struggle at all to re-create the produced music live? I don’t think we do. It’s definitely different, because we can’t layer as many things. But on this record, our producer, Michael Beinhorn, was quite adamant that we make the songs work just in the practice space, and we did that in pre-production. We didn’t jam them out; they were written with different styling points, so it was important to him. Also, we had just gotten [bassist] Johan [Wohlert] back in the band—we had the rhythm section back to the original—and he wanted to explore that as much as possible in the music. We really tried to make it a band album, to make it sound like a band playing, and I think we succeed quite well. I don’t think it is that different when we play live. It’s obviously a bit more raw, but it’s not like a totally different kind of scenario.

Do you have to choose which instruments are going to be performed live? We have to do that all the time. And also, we can’t do as many harmonies as on the album but we seem to be quite good at getting around it in ways. Nick [Watts] our keyboard player who we’ve played with for many years, he is very busy when we play live; he does a lot of stuff—backing vocals, guitar and a lot of synths and chords and little counter-melodies—and sometimes he’ll play one of the harmonies on the piano instead of singing it. It kind of comes together in the same way, just slightly different.

Did it take you guys a while in the early days to really be satisfied with your live sound? When we first started out, I think we were just very excited to be able to make a lot of noise (laughs). It was more about playing really loud and having the amps cranked up.

When we first started the band we already were friends, and we were doing stuff together creatively, but the idea of forming a band came about when this whole wave of bands like Nirvana came out, which led us to discover Dinosaur Jr, My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth and stuff like that, which was more like alternative-rock music. Before that time, we had grown up with ’80s pop music, so I think we started out maybe slightly mimicking some of the bands we liked at the time, and ever so slowly our own kind of unique weirdness crept into the mix. I think when we did [2003’s]Frengers album, that’s when we really started thinking about sonics and how to convey it live. Before that we were too caught up in different things to even think about that. Back then, you just played small gigs, small venues, and you didn’t have your own sound guy, so whoever was there just had to make sense of it.

Mew has been a band since 1994, so more than 20 years. What’s left to accomplish musically? I think it’s about trying to make the most natural album you can, where it just feels completely unhindered in a way. There are always passages you just work too much on. We love working out all the details, but the really magical moments are the ones that come about where you don’t have any idea where they come from—you just grab it out of the air. If we could make an entire album like that, that would be the goal. I don’t know if it will ever happen. I think there is always going to be some hindrance to reach that point.

How important is it to you as a songwriter to blaze new musical trails? It’s very important. I think if you reach a state where you say, “We’ve figured it out; we should just keep doing this,” then it’s kind of just repeating yourself or planting the flag and saying, “This is as far as we’ll be exploring in the world of music.”

I think it’s important to us that it can’t be too easy for us. We have to keep challenging ourselves in terms of where we can take the songs and where we can take music and trying something new every time. I don’t really understand bands that just aspire to sound like The Rolling Stones or whoever. The Rolling Stones already did it. It’s not that you have to reinvent music entirely, but if you can contribute something new, that is what any band should aspire to do.

What is the current music scene like in Scandinavia? It’s pretty interesting. It’s grown so much in the time I’ve been alive. When we started out as a band there were a lot of interesting things going on, but it was so hidden in the underground, because the bands who got signed were signed by people who didn’t really understand what they were doing. They would sign bands that sounded like something that happened in the U.K. four years before, so it was very derivative of the U.K. scene.

Now, it feels like bands really dare to be themselves and maintain their own uniqueness. When we started out it was kind of unheard of for a Danish band to even tour in America. We didn’t have like what they have in Sweden, a long history of successful international bands. We never had ABBA or anything like that, so the music scene was little bit weak. But I think it is just so much better now—a lot of great bands coming out of Denmark and Scandinavia as a whole.

Weblink: http://lasvegasweekly.com/ae/music/2015/sep/16/the-weekly-interview-mew-vocalist-jonas-bjerre/

Your songs can be very different live—more jammy, and sometimes a little heavier. Yeah, we’ve always made a concerted effort to extend certain sections and give songs another element live that we don’t necessarily have on the records.

Is that why you recorded the most recent record (June’s All Your Favorite Bands) almost entirely live? Yeah, it has always been a struggle for us to put on the record what we do live, and we’ve always felt that we are at our best as a band in the live setting. The mentality was, let’s go make it sound as live as we can and capture that energy in the studio. That’s how [producer] Dave [Rawlings] records all of his music. We were all facing each other, and we tried creating that vibe that you get onstage. And it seemed to work out.

You also road-tested the songs, right? How did getting to see audience reactions affect the final outcome? There were certain sections that just weren’t hitting live, so we would structure them differently, like the bridge would come after the second chorus as opposed to after the solo, something like that. That kind of experience is invaluable. Even with countless hours of rehearsal, you can’t get what you get playing the song in front of an audience in one show.

Is there a particular song you think really benefitted from that? “Right on Time” definitely came together in that particular way. It became more driving. All of them really benefitted, though.

A lyric from the title track stood out for me: “May all your favorite bands stay together.” Where did that idea come from? [Frontman] Taylor [Goldsmith] had that line for a long time—he was actually singing the chorus for a long time and didn’t know what to do with it. The song was written for a friend, a younger person who was kind of finding their way, this was like a good-tidings-to-you sentiment. Despite what you may experience, how traumatic certain things can be, try to hold onto that element that makes you youthful. If you really unpack it, it’s somebody who’s graduated from adolescence.

Dawes’ lyrics remind me of signature LA artists like Jackson Browne, The Eagles and Tom Petty. Is that the music you and Taylor were raised on growing up in Southern California? We were more raised on soul and Steely Dan, and Bob Dylan to a certain extent. We didn’t really start getting into that stuff until people started making the comparisons. It makes sense, I guess, but when we released our first record that was a common criticism or a common comparison, but I didn’t listen to a Jackson Browne record until I was like 19. I had heard some of his songs, but I didn’t dig deeper into his catalog until we were given the opportunity to meet him and hang out with him. I didn’t develop an affinity for Joni Mitchell or The Eagles until later as well, and I know the same goes for Taylor.

Maybe it has something to do with being raised in LA and the commonality that we all experience as Angelenos. For any artist, where you come from influences your tastes and forms your decisions and aesthetic values. LA is a giant city, yet there’s a certain closeness, and it definitely cultivates a certain type of lifestyle.

Your musical style brushes up against a lot of genres. I’ve seen you on bills that were bluegrass, alt-country, rock, folk. How would you describe it to someone who hasn’t heard you? I usually just go with rock ’n’ roll, but I can see why somebody might want to call it Americana or folk or indie rock. It’s tough for me to say objectively it’s this or that—it’s whatever the listener makes it. But I’m happy we do brush up against all these different genres, because it’s given me opportunity to play with a lot of artists that are very different from one another.

Web link: http://lasvegasweekly.com/ae/music/2015/aug/06/weekly-interview-dawes-drummer-griffin-goldsmith/

In the wake of the Bunkhouse’s sudden closing on Monday, Sunday’s show has been moved to Backstage Bar & Billiards.

What’s life like for a metal band at your level in 2015? It’s an interesting place to be. You have to put in a lot of hard work, and you definitely have to put in the miles—you have to go on tour and bust your ass writing stuff. … Some bands get lucky, I’m not gonna lie, but I feel if you put in the work, put in the time, you can make a living. We have for some time now.

What sort of goals do you guys have now, having recently released your fourth full-length? To stay on our upward trajectory. The records get better, and as musicians we get better. There’s a certain routine aspect to being in a band, and if we’re off for a very long time we miss it, like certain breeds of dogs—you need to take them out, they need to be walked. I think at a very basic level we’ve been conditioned, like, “Man, I want to get on a stage, I want to play, I want to turn my amp up, I wanna see my friends in other states and visit places.” They’re kind of like work vacations.

New album Restarter sounds like a return to an earlier musical style for Torche. Do you agree? I think it sounds taken back to [2007’s] In Return stuff, heavier and more direct, but I feel like it’s also very current to where we want to be as far as the energy. It’s very true to our live sound.

Did [previous album] Harmonicraft ruffle your fans’ feathers? We tend to do new things and keep ourselves entertained. We have our sound and our identity, but it allows us to revisit or explore an aspect of our sound as opposed to doing the same thing over and over. It’s very liberating and freeing and keeps it very exciting to us to not have limitations on our sound. I feel like Harmonicraft was more sonically tight and energetic in vibe and tone. It was upbeat rock and roll.

It’s been a decade since you released your first album. How has the writing process evolved over those 10 years? We’ve kept the same setup, as far as writing rather quickly, because we’re usually in a time crunch. We have members who live across Florida, and we really have to take advantage of the time we have together. So it’s always really long days, and we usually demo stuff and hear it the next day in order to really let it digest. I feel that over time we’ve really developed a way of working quickly and efficiently both in writing and recording live in the studio. You’re going to have those instances where you hit a wall, so to speak, but I feel that we always work around it together.

One thing I think spans all your records is the band’s pop sensibility, which is notable for a metal band. We all grew up with pop music or even rock and metal stuff that was catchy, that was about the songs. It was all sorts of custom melodies and hooks but that doesn’t mean you can’t get heavy. There’s so much you can do while still keeping it memorable, and that’s something that attracts us.

And except for a few outliers, your songs are usually pretty short, too. Is that intentional? Honestly, we try to let the music come together on its own. It’s very basic songwriting at first, and we very much let it roll. Its not in us to sit there and say, “Okay, for this song we want a super heavy Ramones-type part that goes into this shoegazey wash part that goes back around and does this Sabbath thing.” For us it’s like, “Hey man, here’s a riff.” And if people like it then we’ll jam with it. A lot of the stuff is done on the spot, and some of the stuff gets down to the wire.

Web link: http://lasvegasweekly.com/ae/music/2015/jul/22/weekly-interview-torche-bassist-jonathan-nunez/

Over 20 years, a handful of records and countless shows, no act has come to embody the Vegas punk scene quite like The Vermin. But nothing good can last forever, and the band’s hilarious, offensive and always-entertaining run ends July 3 with a final performance that shares its name with the release of a new retrospective album, The Vermin Must Die. Singer/guitarist Dirk Vermin, bassist Rob Ruckus and drummer Gerry “Turbo” Proctor look back on two memorably drunken decades in the desert.

THE SHOWS

Turbo: “You grow up listening to Ill Repute, and next thing you know you’re playing with them or Doctor Know or Youth Brigade, or any number of great punk bands from back in the day. … We even got to play with Sylvain Sylvain from The New York Dolls.”

Ruckus: “The first Las Vegas Shakedown at the Orleans—we played with everyone from The Dictators to Guitar Wolf and Wayne Kramer from MC5, an absolutely amazing lineup of bands. All the New York shows, the last LA show we did with Adolescents and 7 Seconds and Channel 3. All the shows with TSOL and Agent Orange.”

Vermin: “Opening for TSOL, as drunk as I’ve ever been onstage. Turbo had to tune my guitar, and it didn’t help. We got to open for Fear twice. One show I remember we were great; the other show I do not.”

THE MOMENTS

Ruckus: “Getting to play for Timothy Leary, who came to see us at the Double Down right before he died. We sat and talked for a few minutes, and then I went on. He lasted about four songs, came up, hugged me and said, “You guys are very entertaining, but you are very loud and I must now leave.”

Turbo: “One show where Ruckus threw his bass at me from the back of the bar at the Double Down. It was spiraling toward my head, and then it did this weird Bruce Lee thing and went sideways and landed perfectly on his amp and my drum head. It was, like, bionically weird, and everyone at the bar was like, “Whoooaaaa!”

Vermin: “At one time we did a weekly gig at the Wet Stop—that’s where we honed our chops and got our stage shtick down. For a weekly show you have to stay on your toes, and the three of us have big mouths, never at a loss for words. But it was tough; it was Wednesday night. I don’t miss it at all.”

Ruckus: There were times at Calamity Jayne’s where I used to do this thing called the beer fountain, where I’d put a full can of beer in my mouth and blow, and it would make 12-foot fountains on each side. I did this one night, and there happened to be a local motorcycle gang up front, and I doused them. One of them jumps onstage and puts a knife to my throat. I finished the song and handed him a shot of whiskey as an apology, and then the guy took the knife from my throat.”

HOME BASE

Vermin: “Double Down. I mean, that’s home. I never feel more comfortable onstage than when we’re at the Double Down.”

Ruckus: “There were so many drunken nights there where just anything would happen. Usually, I would end up naked by the end of the night. Until we got the TV show [Bad Ink], every single show I would end up naked by the end. Then we went on TV, and I was told I couldn’t do it. Now that I’m not on that channel, I can do it again for the last show (laughs).”

THE LEGACY

Turbo: “When there wasn’t a scene in Vegas, The Vermin was the scene. Bands would come, and bands would go. And who’s still standing? The Vermin. But we’ve got all these great bands and a scene that’s thriving now.”

Vermin: “Obnoxious. Your mother hated us, and your sister wanted to f*ck us (laughs). Something like that. We were just that punk band. When other bands would play with us, if we didn’t pick on them they felt like they hadn’t arrived.”

Turbo: “We were the band where punk rock meets pro wrestling. We were the punk-rock Rat Pack, and we had that title for a really long time.”

Web link: http://lasvegasweekly.com/ae/music/2015/jul/01/final-gig-vermin-looks-back-two-decades-vegas-punk/