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Before Noise Ratchet's show at The Scene on August 17, I sat down
with Roger Molina (guitar) and Brandon Young (drummer). These guys are very nice
and I want to thank them for taking time out for the interview.
Kevin:
State your guys' names and what you do in the band. |
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Kevin: What do you think the difference is?
Roger: It's a whole different
mentality. Cause' there's more music on the East Coast, or more like a wide variety
of music on the East Coast. Like out here people are more excited about music
from what I've seen. It might just be because we suck.
All: (laugh)
Roger: But, for the most part it seems like there's more enthusiasm about music
on the West Coast. I don't think we get as many good tours as the East Coast gets
so I think we kinda get left out.
Kevin: You guys are signed to The
Militia Group. How do you guys like that?
Brandon: The Militia Group
is pretty much awesome. They take care of us ridiculously. Chad and Rory are the
two owners. They kinda just picked us up cause' they were really good friends
of ours. So we pretty much wanted to do a record with them and it's been going
really good ever since.
Kevin: I've read really good reviews about
your Till We Have Faces. How do you guys respond to people coming up to
you and saying" Your album is amazing?"
Roger: I usually go "uhh what?"
All:(laugh)
Brandon: I mean it's only encouraging to know that you're
affecting people.
Kevin: Well, how do you guys respond to someone
coming up and saying "your album let me down, I though it would be better," or
something like that?
Brandon: Then I actually give them the same power
as someone who said it's good because they're speaking their mind and I know our
music doesn't please everyone.
Roger: I could imagine.
All: (laugh)
Kevin: What's the history of Noise Ratchet? How did you guys form?
What albums have you released?
Roger: We formed in 1998. Brandon and
I and the other 3 guys that aren't here right now (Joel, singer, Danny, guitar,
and Jon, bass) were together for about 2 months when we released an EP called
Why We Die and then we did a couple of retarded tours with Dogwood and
Stairwell and we did a couple of West Coast tours on our own and then decided
that we wanted to concentrate on doing more music. So we stayed home and kept
writing and tried to figure out what the heck was going on with labels. We had
a couple things going on but, none of them felt like home and then we ended up
signing with The Militia. Backtrack, we got Jon Jameson who is our new bass player
and Joel just went to the singing and that was about two years ago. At that time
we pretty much had a record ready to go, but we were waiting on something to do
with it. Then The Militia Group, who we had been friends with for a couple of
years, offered us to do something and we took it. We released an EP, like a three
song EP of songs that were going to be off of the album in 2000 just to kinda
get that going and then we played a couple of festivals and tried to get those
out there so people would want it. Then we did the record. It came out alright
and now we've been touring since that came out. We did a May tour with Veronica
and The Kick and then we just did two month tour with the band Cool Hand Luke
and then we did stuff with Beloved and a week with Juliana Theory and Piebald
and we did some stuff with Celebrity and Fontane, who's really good.
Brandon:
They freakin' rule!
Roger: Basically we just did it all on the full DIY too.
Everything we did was booked not by an agent but, on our own.
Kevin:
How did you guys get the name Noise Ratchet?
Roger: Danny used to work
at a landscaping place and that was like five years ago or something lame. I don't
exactly know the story. I think for the most part it's just stupid but I think
he (Danny) hit something with the cars they drive in landscaping and some weird
way he got the name. Like he hit a fence or something. I don't know what the heck
happened.
All: (laugh)
Brandon: He dropped a wrench or something. I
don't know.
All: (laugh)
Roger: It was something stupid. I guess it
made like a ratchety sound, but that's how we got it.
Brandon: We had nothing
to do with the name. It was Joel and Danny.
Kevin: How has Noise Ratchet
changed and developed through the years?
Roger: We haven't.
All:
(laugh)
Brandon: I can grow facial hair now.
All: (laugh)
Brandon:
When I first joined I couldn't grow facial hair. When we first started we pretty
much just wrote music and played. We all came from completely different backgrounds
of music. I read an article about us today, which sounds arrogant, but anyway
in the article they said they couldn't put a genre on us. I think that shows that
we all come from different backgrounds of music and that's cool. Now our music
has kinda redefined what we want but still, we have no clue what we're going to
sound like, but we do have a better view point, which we didn't before.
Roger:
I think we just changed as friends too, and as people. The day I met him (Brandon)
was the first day of practice and that was his first day of practice. So from
day one I had no idea who this guy (Brandon) was. I knew Danny but, I had no idea
who Joel was either. So the first day of this band was the first day I met them.
Typically you're friends with the guys and you get involved but I didn't know
anybody and nobody knew him (Brandon) but, now we're friends and we've done like
five or six tours and spent the last three to four months together every day and
I think our friendships have developed. I think that's one of the main ways that
it's changed.
Kevin: How did you guys find Jon to play bass?
Roger: He rules. He was like the little kid that used to play with As I Lay Dying
and then later on with Nothing To Lose. Jon's basically a scenester kid and everybody
knows Jon and we knew him so we found him and basically just decided to try it
and it worked.
Brandon: He's smart as junk.
Roger: We played a show
without him one time and went back to Joel playing bass and singing and it was
retarded. It was like spaghetti and tuna fish.
All: (laugh)
Kevin:
You guys are about to go on tour with The Start. What's that tour going to consist
of?
Brandon: It's going to be mostly West Coast and some Mid-West. I
don't know anything about The Star but I've heard they're really good.
Kevin: Where do you see Noise Ratchet in five years or where do you hope Noise
Ratchet is in five years?
Roger: Who has a clue?
All: (laugh)
Brandon: I have no clue. The only thing I can hope is that we're still able to
understand the reals of music and it's not like this big main thing. I would love
to have it as my job everyday but, you know sometimes it's cool to come back with
five bucks.
Roger: We really don't know. If you would have asked us "where
will Noise Ratchet be in six months?" We probably would have said doing the same
old stuff, playing the same old places, and still suck, and now we're here and
we still suck but, we're still doing the same thing and playing the same places
but we love it. People are getting it more and we're getting it more. It seems
like it's this big giant puzzle together and we have no idea which pieces go where
but they all kind of look the same. So eventually you'll figure it out. We're
just doing it and glad to be doing it. As long as we appreciate where we'll be
at and what we're doing. I mean, who knows where we'll be at. I'd love to be Aerosmith,
but who knows what the heck is going to happen.
Brandon: One thing I wanna
add is that like from being on tour for two months you spend a lot more time driving
then actually playing. So you have a lot of time to think. It was really cool
to go across the country. There's a lot of questions I would ask about myself
just about different subjects and I've kind of been able to find a lot of things
just because I play in a band and my band got me to travel across the US. So our
music is music but, like other then that on aspects of ourselves, It just helped
us grow as people a lot.
Kevin: What do you guys love about music?
What makes you come out night after night and give it all to the crowd?
Roger: I think Piebald said it best "a nine to five isn't for me," and, "we
got the best job ever. We really got lucky." We got one thing that we're
supposed to be doing right now. Oddly enough I think that if I had to go to work
for sixty-four days straight without a break I would probably hate my job real
bad but, on the last tour that we just did we probably had about four days off
in like two months and you don't ever grow sick of it. The feeling you get form
a show and you go in there and there's tons of kids in there feeling it. You just
get the vibe. I guess the rock vibe. You can tell everybody is excited about it
and sure you've been playing the past two months non-stop, but when you get to
that town it's the first time the kids have seen you in a long time or the first
time they've ever seen you and so its almost like you get a fresh start. It helps
to not get worn out. We have great jobs and we get to meet cool people. I'm so
grateful for that.
Kevin:You guys have any advice for aspiring bands?
Brandon: The only thing I can say is that I used to be in an old band
and we were band, but we were trying to be a band and just trying to play music
and we had fun doing it, but the difference between that band and Noise Ratchet
is that when I first joined we knew that this is what we wanted to do and we dropped
everything like our jobs, money, girls, and family sometimes. That's pretty much
it, just to drop everything. If your heart wants to do it then just do it. That
was a cheesy line but whatever.
All: (laugh)
Roger: I'm going to answer
this aspiring bands question. Everybody has this pre-conception of what the ideal
rockstar guy is. They think it's this untouchable guy and it's somebody that you'll
never be and that you'll never know, but every guy that I've ever met that's been
anywhere in a band whether they're MTV or they're Deep Elms' Prize Band, it doesn't
matter. Everybody that I've ever met has the same thing in common. They're just
people and sometimes you like them and sometimes you don't, but the point is that
there is no elite person. There's no person that was born to be in Pantera or
born to be in Metallica. Everybody that I've ever met is the same people. If that's
what's true to you and that's what's important to you then I say just do it and
don't believe that it can't happen. You have to push forward with confidence and
just believe in yourself. If you can find four or however many people to play
with that, have that same belief, and have that same passion and the confidence
in themselves and making it happen, then you can do it. Just don't give up on
it if that's really what you want to do. If you want to be a doctor then you go
to school and get through the crap and then you're there. Nobody, unless you're
The Calling, keeps you under their wing and keeps you until you're ready to explode
onto MTV. That's not the way it happens. It takes hard work and diligence. Plus
you have to write good songs. The most important thing. If the songs suck, you
can work as long as you want but everyone is going to laugh at you.
Kevin:
Well that's it. Thanks guys.
Roger: No problem bro. Three paragraphs
of me saying crap.
All: (laugh)
http://www.noiseratchet.com
http://www.themilitiagroup.com
Noise Ratchet pictures taken by Weston Reid and courtesy of noiseratchet.com.
Noise Ratchet interview conducted 8.17 by Kevin
Wiles.
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