Envy On The Coast

This week’s Beat Bazaar is one I’ve been looking forward to for a long time.  It’s probably one of my favorite interviews to date.  In November we had the opportunity to sit with the boys of Envy on the Coast, about 40 minutes before they opened 30 Seconds to Mars in Montreal, and we had so much fun that I’ve been waiting impatiently to share it with you.

Maybe it’s because it was so spur of the moment and unprepared, that we didn’t have time to do much more than just introduce ourselves and have a real conversation– the interview only being booked about an hour before it was held – or maybe it was the laid back atmosphere; but either way we had a blast.

As we were escorted into a small sitting area backstage, we ran into Tomo Milicevic (30 Seconds to Mars) who we had interviewed a few months prior and he was kind enough to sing our praises to the band before heading into another room, which was an interesting way to get the interview started.

CONFRONT: Right!  All that praise and I’m totally unprepared.

SAL & BRIAN: (laughing) It’s ok don’t worry.

CONFRONT: How about we start by you telling me a little bit about who Envy on the Coast is?

BRIAN: Like who we are individually or collectively?

CONFRONT: Both actually?

The guys barely had time to consider their answers that suddenly, Tomo was back, having grabbed a chair and settling himself next to me, looking at Envy on the Coast with a laid back smile.

CONFRONT: Right!  ‘Cause that’s not gonna distract me at all.  So how are ya?

TOMO: Pretty good!

Trying to remain composed, Sal quickly jumped in to answer the question

SAL: Envy on the Coast is a band from Long Island, New York…

TOMO: That you are in!

SAL: (laughing) that I am in and I am Sal.

BRIAN: I’m Brian.

DAN: I’m Dan, I play the drums.  Sal plays guitar and keys…

BRIAN: I play guitar and sing.

RYAN: I’m Ryan, I sing.  And we’re missing Jer, he’s downstairs at merch right now, he plays bass.  But he hates interviews anyway, so it’s all good.  He doesn’t enjoy them.

DAN: He likes you… guys.  He likes you.  Don’t take it personally.

CONFRONT: Aww ok!  I’m good then!

RYAN: But anyway, what are we about?

DAN: (laughing) sex uh and…

RYAN: Don’t listen to him.  We’ve been playing this line up for about two years.  Some of us have been playing longer.  Sal and Jer started playing together about 6 years, me and Bri came into the picture about 3 years ago and Dan’s the newest of 2 years.

CONFRONT: You guys have an EP out right?  How long has that been out?

DAN: Officially?

CONFRONT: Yeah!

BRIAN: We have had so many different like… It’s been done and recorded for over a year.

SAL: We started recording in April.

RYAN: Of 2006.

DAN: No 2005.

BRIAN: We used to basically when we did shows, burn the song on CD-R’s and just put sticky back labels on them and then just sit there with sharpies or a stamp and stamping our name on them.  And then it got properly pressed…

DAN: Yeah, we didn’t have any money to really press it ourselves and we were still debating if we were going to put out the record ourselves; or if we were going to sign to some type of label or whatever.

BRIAN: It was officially pressed in August by Photo Finish.

DAN: And it was officially released in November 7th but we had already been touring on it since July.

RYAN: There you go, wrap your head around that.

CONFRONT:   Is Temper, Temper the official single?

BRIAN: Yeah I guess it could be considered the single.  It’s the song that people have latching on to the most so yeah.  It wasn’t like “Well ok, Temper, Temper’s gonna be our single” or anything.  It was more like “Well people sing that song so we might as well make it the single”.

DAN: I mean my grandma is even singing that song.

CONFRONT: It’s a good song guys, that’s why.

BRIAN: But people like different songs.  Like everyone has their song on our EP.  Like yeah, most people like Temper but then there are kids that comes up to us and tells us that You Won’t Hear This is their favorite song and that’s pretty cool.

DAN: Everyone wants Green Eyes Up on our MySpace.

SAL: And everyone can just go on Pure Volume and hear the whole thing.

BRIAN: Or buy the record.

SAL: It’s 5$

DAN: Or steal it.

SAL: But don’t steal it though.

These guys are pretty funny as proof by the burst of laughter that came for neighboring room; seems people were eves dropping on us.

CONFRONT: So are you guys going to have a full album out soon?

RYAN: We’ve actually been touring for four months straight and finally these are the last couple of days.

SAL: We’re doing today obviously with 30 Seconds to Mars and tomorrow we’ll be in Troy, NY with Say Anything and the day after that, we’ll be in Toronto with 30 Seconds.  And then we’re finally done.  We’re gonna start writing our record in upstate New York at one of our friends Log Cabin.

CONFRONT: And you’re releasing that on Photo Finish Records?

ALL: We are.

DAN: It should be out by late spring…ish,

BRIAN: Late spring.

RYAN: About the time we do Bamboozle on the East Coast.

SAL: Hopefully we’ll start touring in late march.

CONFRONT: Are you guys already scheduled for Bamboozle.

BRIAN: Yep.

RYAN:  We kind of have our choice of days as off right now, so we can’t really say when we’re gonna play; but we’ll be there at one of the days.

DAN: We might be there for both.

RYAN: Yeah we might be there for both hanging out but probably only playing one day.

CONFRONT: Is Taste of Chaos a possibility.

DAN: We never really discussed Taste of Chaos.  We didn’t get offered Taste of Chaos I don’t think.

RYAN: Do you know something we don’t know?

CONFRONT: No just hoping you might be.

BRIAN: The tour’s awesome.  If we got offered Taste of Chaos it would be a great tour for us.

DAN: It’s the same thing as Warped Tour.  We haven’t had any offers or discussed it.  But we would do Taste of Chaos or Warped.  It’s just not really in our hands.

CONFRONT: Obviously this was so last minute that you guys don’t know much about who we’re with right?

SAL: The message was really vague.

CONFRONT: We’re from CONFRONT Magazine, it’s an Online publication and obviously there are varied reasons for that; but the main reason being that the New Media is really what people are into right now.  And kids and young adults who are the main market for entertainment news and media, are looking to the internet more and more rather than go out and get print because it’s more accessible.  You mentioned your MySpace before.  Is that a marketing tool you use a lot?

DAN: Yeah we do.

BRIAN: We do a lot of messaging when we’re at home talking to all the kids and stuff.  It’s really cool because after we played Toronto we really got an influx of messages from kids from Canada.  So it’s good that we’re here.

SAL: Especially in Toronto.

BRIAN: Well here too, Montreal too.  And Vancouver.  Actually my dad was born in Canada.  I know [the others] are going to try and embarrass me, so I might as well tell you.

CONFRONT: (laughing)Why would they embarrass you with that? Canada is a cool place!

BRIAN: Well he’s from Newfoundland and everyone makes fun of you when you’re from there.

CONFRONT: Oh well yeah I agree with them then.

BRIAN: (laughing) I know right!  It’s like being from Louisiana.

CONFRONT: Well it exactly is, actually.  Didn’t maritimers settle in Louisiana?  Like the Acadians or something like that?

BRIAN: Yeah!  I went there.  I whale watch or whatever.  It was cool.

CONFRONT: You mentioned Pure Volume, is that something that helped you guys out as well?

DAN: Yeah.  We’ve been featured artists.  It’s been amazing.  Obviously it’s helped us out on our MySpace page as well.  Cause obviously they go to the Pure Volume page and then to the MySpace.  We get like 4000 plays a day.

SAL: And on top of that we’ve been like top artists on…

BRIAN: There’s a whole bunch of charts that we’re like #1 on.  We’ve been in front of bands that like, we never even seriously thought of competing with.

SAL: Yeah like My Chem [My Chemical Romance] and…

BRIAN: Brand New.  So it’s been pretty good.

CONFRONT: So how did you get your start?  We’re you like a high school or garage band or something like that?

SAL: Well Jer and I had been together for like 6 years and we had another drummer whose name was Seth.

RYAN: We’re like the fallout of all the bands who didn’t want to take it seriously.  It’s pretty ridiculous.  Like that’s the way Long Island works, I’ve noticed that you have this giant mass of musicians and everyone and their mother is in a band; and slowly it just gets swindled down.  Like we just did a tour with 30 Seconds to Mars and it was us, 30 Seconds to Mars, Head Automatica, Cobra Starship and Men, Women and Children.  And it was hilarious being on that tour, because there was like literally most of the dudes from Long Island who ended up taking it seriously, without giving up.  Like you have TJ, he used to be in a band from Long Island and now he’s in Men, Women and Children.  Then you have Daryl who was in Glass Jaw and now he’s in Head Automatica.

CONFRONT: Yeah when we interviewed Nick from MWC, he mentioned you guys for something.  I don’t remember what we were talking about but I think it was a similar topic.

SAL: Is that the keyboardist?

CONFRONT: Yeah.

SAL: He wins.

BRIAN: Yeah he wins.  Nick’s awesome.

SAL: On a smaller scale, me and Jer played in a band called 3 Minute Warning,  Ryan played in a band called KC 12, Dan played in a band called Go Quest and uh Brian….

BRIAN: They met my brother in a mall.

SAL: And then we gave him a flyer because we were looking for another guitar player, not really thinking that this little kid was going to call us back but he was like “My brother he plays guitar and he kinda sing” and uh…

BRIAN: I definitely did not sing at that point he’s totally lying.

SAL: (laughing) yeah we gave him a flyer and a couple of days later we got a call from [Brian].

CONFRONT: How old are you guys by the way?  I know it’s a really random question but I didn’t think to ask before.

ALL: Twenties.

SAL: I’m 19.

BRIAN: Dan Is gonna say that I’m like 37 because he says that at every interview.  It’s not that funny.

TECH IN THE OTHER ROOM: Hey!  37 is not that funny dude.  Pretty soon it’s gonna be a reality.

Trying to keep a straight face despite the bursts of laughter coming from the other room and from his band mates, Ryan tried to keep the interview on track.  These interruptions were fairly frequent during the interview and it was hard to not laugh every second.

RYAN: Jer is 20.  He just turned 20.  We had two birthdays on the road.  Sal just turned 19.

DAN: And he can legally drink in Canada.

SAL: Basically the way we do it, is it’s your birthday for the entire time until it’s someone else’s birthday.  So technically it’s still my birthday.

CONFRONT: That’s awesome.  Can I start touring with you guys?  How has the touring been so far by the way?

DAN: We’ve only been touring for four and half months.

RYAN: We’ve been touring straight for four and half months.  But for the past year we’ve been doing regional things.  Like we’ve done Philly and Boston, stuff like that.

ANOTHER TECH: 15 minutes guys.

SAL: Yeah ok.

RYAN: Me and Sal…  Well all of us were still in college.  Dan and Jer were going to a community school and Bri was going to a community school and Sal and I were going to college in Long Island, so we were doing shows  on the weekend or weekdays and driving back at night to get back for school, so that was all we could do.  Plus, we didn’t have any funding because we didn’t actually end up with the label until we had left.  Like Photo Finish, our label is a brand new label and they were still getting things set up.  Our manager is the one who shelled out the money.  Initially we had done touring with this terrible, terrible cargo van from the 80’s that had these 2 bucket seats and it lasted us like five shows before it was done.

SAL: Is that the one we have for sale.

BRIAN: We actually sold it yesterday.

SAL: How much did we get for it?

BRIAN: Like 600$.

Once again everyone was laughing.  Unfortunately, that had to be the end of our conversation given that it was now less than 10 minutes to ‘stage call’ for Envy on the Coast.

We said our ‘thank yous’ and ‘goodbyes’ and quickly headed back to the front, eager for the show to start.  While in the crowd, I overheard a couple standing next to me ask who the openers were.  Wanting to be helpful I let them know that is was EOTC and the girl replied “I hope they don’t suck to bad”.  “There awesome actually” I replied rather quickly, realizing I really had nothing to base that statement on, having never seen them live.

But I assure you, they did not disappoint.  They sounded great, were full of energy and their interaction with the audience was on par with that of the headliners.  When their set was over, I heard the same girl tell her boyfriend “That was amazing”.  I’m glad she sees it our way.  I’d encourage all of you who have yet to discover Envy on the Coast to visit either their website or MySpace page.  It’s worth the click.

www.envyonthecoast.com

www.myspace.com/envyonthecoast

To view our full picture gallery please visit CONFRONT Magazine’s library of content.

We’d also like to extend a special thank you to Photo Finish Records and Envy on the Coast for allowing us to use the song Temper, Temper in CONFRONT Magazine’s video teaser.  To view the teaser, please follow the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdRa5DPwA6Y