by richard abrahamson
Evergreen Terrace is a local hardcore/punk band that formed in 1999. Back then, they were playing churches and local venues and managed to amass quite the following after just a couple of shows. Today, Evergreen Terrace is selling out shows around the country and has traveled all over the world with bands like Hatebreed, Strung Out, Thursday and many more. On Saturday August 11th, ET came back to Jacksonville to perform for the group's first fans at Fuel Coffeehouse.
There were a total of seven bands playing that night and by the end of the second or third act, the show was completely sold out. The venue was packed like a can of sardines and with every breath it felt like you inhaled a gallon of sweat. But the place was full of energy and the crowd was ready to see their hometown heroes back from their nationwide tour promoting their new album Wolfbiker. As ET prepared their mics and instruments, security got ready for the anxious crowd, who had been waiting hours in the sauna to see the band. I heard one of the security guards warn another one that the crowd will be going wild during this show. Finally the moment had come and, as expected, the kids went nuts.
During the show the band interacted with the crowd. Several times Andrew allowed the fans to sing into the microphone and the kids trampled each other to get their rock star moment. At one point a guy jumped over the barricades to get on stage and sing a couple of lines into the microphone, kicking and pushing the security people in the process. Now if that is not being a wolfbiker (a person who does something regardless of what other people say), I don't know what is. After a powerful set, the band heeded the crowd's chants for "one more song." As they prepared to play a cover of 'Mad World' by Tears for Fears, the crowd once again began chanting. This time it's "we are the wicked," the chorus of 'To the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville,' one of the most memorable songs on the new album. Hearing the chant, the band granted the crowd's request.
After the show, EU was able to speak with Josh James and Craig Chaney about their tours, the new album and their history.
EU: How's the tour been going?
Josh James: Awesome there's one day left. Three and a half weeks started in Atlanta it went all the way up and around and then tomorrow Orlando.
EU: Are you guys doing another tour after this one?
JJ: Yeah. We have about three and a half weeks off and then we go out for about roughly eight weeks with Strung Out. It's going to be awesome. It starts in Arizona, cuts across into the east coast, then we go to eastern Canada like Nova Scotia and drop back down and head towards California.
EU: I see you guys have been going overseas and all over the place.
JJ: Yeah. After that [tour] we go on the Persistence Tour in Europe with Hatebreed, Agnostic Front, Ignite, Sworn Enemy and Death Before Dishonor. So it's gonna be awesome.
EU: What is your favorite place to play in the world?
JJ: Favorite place to play. I really like playing Jacksonville. I really like playing Atlanta. Belgium. One of my favorite shows that I ever played ever was in Belgium.
[At this point, Josh had to go help load up his equipment, so guitarist Craig Chaney stepped in to finish the interview]
Craig Chaney: In general? Well obviously Jacksonville, southern California like Corona, Anaheim, San Diego. Anything in California. Even when we were a young band we would play over there and sell out a 600/700 capacity venue and we wouldn't sell in our hometown. It's crazy and weird, it's hard not to get attached to those kinds of places just because the kids are so hungry for music and there's so many of them in one concentrated area.
EU: You guys ever thought about packing up and moving to California?
CC: Hell no, we would never relocate… I mean the weather is better but the cost of living is worse. But we have family and we are all getting old. We've been in this band a long time. If you relocate your band you're just bullshitting, you know what I mean. Look what happened to Yellowcard. They relocated their band and next thing you know they're from California and you're like, "California, what the f**k? Give me a break! You're not from California you asshole." I mean, cool dudes, cool bands whatever, but we would never do that.
EU: How are the shows different overseas than in the US?
CC: Yes [there's] a lot of difference. I hate to say it, but everyone tells you when you get to Europe "ah they are two years behind blah, blah, blah." Then you go over their and its like, I don't really know if they are two years behind. I just think they are less jaded than American kids, there's less trends going on. So like, if you hit over their then it's flattering. It's like Australia. In Australia, kids over there don't get exposed to much, because not much is distributed over there. So they seek stuff out. They go to the Internet and they look up this band. It's weird because Eulogy [Records] has a huge following in Australia, so that's how we caught on over there. So we were able to tour and headline and do awesome in a totally different country, which is weird as shit. The kids over there don't buy into trends… it's not like there's a "melodic metal core scene" over there… It's not diluted yet. UK is the closest to the US as far as trends go but, yeah, it's cool to be accepted over there and see bands like Ignite. They're massive over there and not really big over here because they get lost in the trends.
EU: Let's talk about Wolfbiker. What is a Wolfbiker?
CC: It's sort off a phenomenon that we started by accident. It started of as a joke. You have ad campaigns, commercials, you have everything like trend band labels telling you this is what's cool, wear this, buy this, listen to this and we were just at the point where we're extremely jaded. You know, you work you're ass off and do things the hard way and it turned into almost like a "f**k it" situation, where it can be used for anything. It turned into an inside joke among us where we would be like "oh man, we got a 13 hour drive, I don't know if I should do anymore shots" you know and then your like "wolfbiker, dude," "wolfbiker, bitch" and it's like "you know what man, wolfbiker. You're right," and then you throw up all over yourself in the van. More or less that's what it means. Kind of self-motivation or like that extra whatever just to not conform and to give yourself that extra boost. It can just be used on so many levels… now kids everywhere are using it… F**king merch guy got tazed last night and got arrested; Drew our singer got tazed last night. I'm surprised he didn't get arrested. If I would've stayed in Tallahassee, I would have been in jail… we had a day off and they went drinking, I came home to my gf [girlfriend] because I'm tamed, more or less. But those bitches went raging in Tallahassee with our friends and then some dude called one of them a pussy or something. Our merch guy is a tiny dude; he looks like Jared Leto mixed with the Berenstain Bears. He's like a pretty passive dude, but when that bitch gets some alcohol in him, you don't want to f**k with him. And these frat dudes, FSU territory, start talking shit and he talked shit back and next thing you know, Andrew, our merch guy, and our fund manager Carl were all wrecking this dude in the parking lot, beating the sh*t out of him. Next thing you know they're getting tazed by a cop… I mean, these are tazers, not like stun guns… and Scott [the diminutive merch guy] was like "what the f**k... you f**king faggot" to a cop and Carl's like "chill the f**k out, don't talk shit to the cops. They'll take you to jail." And [Scott]'s like "F**k it. I don't know what tour you're on man, but I got this f**kin' shit stuck in my side, that f**kin' bitch." Goes to jail in the name of wolfbiker… And that's fine. It definitely corresponds with the meaning of the record and a lot of the lyrics. Us growing up in the Christian scene and us observing the world over the past 8 years and coming to where we are as far as our beliefs and watching this town and getting raised in the Bible belt and just getting sick of everything. Censorship to a conglomerate of ignorant jackasses controlling the club that I work at, the environment that you're in, the way you want to live your life and have fun. It's like, who is somebody else to tell you what to do? It's pretty silly. Fundamentally, it's completely ridiculous but these people do it anyway and other people buy into it and that's the perpetual circle of ignorance. Doing things in the name of the church to protect their income, to protect their livelihoods, protect the bubble of ignorance that they live in their entire lives and then when it gets burst and they don't go to heaven then they're going to be bummed out. And you can quote me on that.
EU: How would you compare Wolfbiker to other ET albums?
CC: Sonically I would say all of our records are self-produced so we've never had a producer come in and tell us what to do and how to write our songs so we've always done things our own way. We write songs. We have a weird songwriting pattern that a lot of bands don't have. We like so many different genres, so many different styles of music that we'll write a heavy song and then we'll get the heavy song out of the way and then we'll be like "let's write a country song," you know what I mean. Not that extreme but we'll try to cover all these genres… We'll go record all these songs and then over the course of several months we'll weed out parts we don't like… and then kind of piece everything together and put of a record and I definitely don't think a lot of bands do that. It's definitely an honest songwriting process.
EU: Is it more of a group effort? Does everyone contribute?
CC: It's definitely a group effort, especially lyrically. I've never been part of a record that has had more lyrical input than Wolfbiker… I mean, Josh, Butters and I pretty much wrote the entire record musically. But what was weird about that was Jason wasn't for a lot of it… but when he came into the studio we kind of wanted to let him do his own thing and we had some problems with a couple songs and unknowingly the bitch just fixed them with little blues riffs that he did. There's one song 'Cheney Cant [Quite] Riff [Like Helmet's Page Hamilton],' which is coincidentally the single for the record which we're doing a video for. I was like "alright, well the vocals are major key and the guitars are minor key on the chorus and there's some kind of like three second part that was awkward, those transitions." Jason comes in, lays down this blues f**king riff perfectly and we're just like "you know what, that's why you're in the band." He fixed that shit. I had no idea how to fix it; no one had any idea how to fix it. Jason walks in not even practicing three practices, jams that shit out and lays it down and we're like "that's why you play bass for our band."
EU: So 'Cheney' will be the single. When will you be shooting the video?
CC: We're recording it in Jacksonville because the concept, the budget was too high. We actually had to find a real house to tear apart. So we got one, we found one. It's pretty tight. You'll see. It's based off of a true story, the concept of the video, what had happened to us on a tour with this band Bain where two of our dudes ended up in jail the next day. But, you'll see. The beginning of the video is based off a true story and then things start to unfold, we tear down a house.
EU: You guys left Eulogy to go with Metal Blade Records. What caused the change?
CC: We signed to Eulogy at a young age. Like, we had the option to sign to Solid State, which is a Christian mega-label, which we could have been under it by now. We chose not to more or less because of the fact that we're not a Christian band. We didn't want to be pegged as a Christian band. I mean, regardless of what we believed in at the time, we just knew that we didn't believe in it enough to be a label slapped on us. We didn't want to have that stigma of whatever because we all knew we were in transition. We all kind of knew we were discovering things and learning things and educating ourselves, you know. So, when it came down to it we signed to Eulogy, it was cool at the time, they had great bands on the label. Then those great bands broke up or signed to a different label and then we were left as the main band on the label and kind of outgrew the label a little bit. They just run their label differently than we would have liked them to. We were basically on the verge of not knowing the future of our band. Tim from As I Lay Dying swooped in… [and said] "Hey, don't break up, guys. I know what your band can do if you had the resources of a bigger label." Then, sure enough, he came in, bought us off of Eulogy, which was mind-blowing that they would spend x amount of dollars. We had one record left and they bought us off. Like, who the f**k does that, you know? So that is just flattering as it is. Immediately we were signed to this label. They bought us off. They were like "man, we don't even care what your first record does; we're just interested in the longevity of your band." We were just like "wow." It's like a night and day difference. We talk to people from the label every day. We go to the headquarters to hang out with them and they take us out to lunch. It's like a personal relationship with them. It's completely different than anything we've ever experienced. So we definitely think that it was the right decision.
EU: You guys have been around for a while now. What's your secret to staying together?
CC: We don't always get along, believe me. How are you going to live in a van with someone for eight years and get along? You're gonna fight. I think when it comes down to it… we all have the same drive and the same common influences from music and for why we're doing this. It keeps us together. It keeps us tightly-knit, especially after touring and seeing other bands drive and why they're doing it... I think the difference between us and a lot of other bands is we pinch each other every day. A lot of bands are just like "oh, boo hoo. We didn't do these numbers in this market. SoundScan this and SoundScan that." Like, give me a f**king break. If we were worried about that sh*t we wouldn't be a band right now. We're doing it for as long as we can because we fucking love it. We write songs the way we want to write them. We want to be able to put in our record and listen to it from start to finish and not hear filler and not hear "oh we needed to write this song for a certain market's taste."… And we jack each other off a lot. Mutual masturbation is the key.
EU: What's next for Evergreen Terrace?
CC: We're going down to Orlando tomorrow and then we've got a month off. We're doing the Strung Out tour for a little over a month and then we go to Europe, do a tour with Hatebreed and Agnostic Front, which is another reason why we stay in this band. When you go on tour with Agnostic Front or somebody like Hatebreed and you're like "what the f**k?" I didn't see that coming 7 or 8 years ago. When you're friends with somebody like Vinnie Stigma from Agnostic Front, when he knows you by name when he sees you, it's like you sh*t your pants, you know what I mean?
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