DS Exclusive Interview: Such Gold talks “Pedestals” EP, song writing, hobbies and the future of the band

DS Exclusive Interview: Such Gold talks “Pedestals” EP, song writing, hobbies and the future of the band

I recently had the good fortune to interview Rochester punks Such Gold. We discuss the band’s latest EP, “Pedestals,” their influences, guest vocals, N.Y. music, hobbies and the future of the band.

You can stream “Pedestals” here while you read the full interview here.

DS: How did the band form?

Such Gold: We formed in Late 2008/Early 2009 when Nate (guitar) and original singer Kyle went back and found some really rough recordings of “Four Superbowls, No Rings” and “You Always Know What’s Best”, that they had made back in 2006.  They decided they finally wanted to do something with them, and recruited Tim (guitar), Devon (bass), and Devan (drums).  We started jamming and reworked those two songs into their final versions, and worked on a cover song, “You Vandal” by Saves The Day.  We then found that Kyle wasn’t really able to do the band, so we had to part ways.  After racking our brains to find a solution, we decided we would go into the studio, record our demo, and then find a singer.  A few days into recording we had gotten in touch with Ben.  He came to a practice, and sang “You Vandal” and nailed it.  We then invited him to the studio the next day, and he brought some lyrics he had written.  He got into the vocal booth and laid down some lyrics over what is now “Four Superbowls, No Rings” and we immediately decided that he was the perfect man for the job.

DS: What inspires you to write songs?

Such Gold: Lyrically, mostly life and it’s ups and downs. Most of our songs focus on themes regarding keeping a positive outlook on life, and turning negative or undesired thoughts or situations around for the better. Musically – our inspiration comes from our love of music and the feeling of creating something meaningful and fulfilling to ourselves and others.

DS: What’s the song writing / recording process like?

Such Gold: The whole process is very exciting! We start out by bringing everyone’s ideas to the table, to get a solid grasp on what we have to work with. We will typically start with a riff, work on a drum beat and then flesh out other ideas as they come along and form them into a song. It usually doesn’t take us too long to come up with the basic structure, but we are pretty picky when it comes to the final product. We would never want to put out something we all aren’t completely happy with.

DS: What are your influences?

Such Gold: We typically cite bands like Saves the Day, Hot Water Music, Boys Night Out, The Progress, At the Drive-In, Propagandhi, A Wilhelm Scream, Damiera, Ambitions and Crime In Stereo as our main influences, although there are a lot of other great bands, musicians and people that inspire us to play music. We’re honored to be associated with and play shows/tour with current bands that continue to inspire us, like Transit, Hostage Calm, The Wonder Years, Make Do And Mend, Defeater, A Loss For Words, and Polar Bear Club.

DS: I get a sense of melodic hardcore mixed with pop punk when I hear your music.  It’s really cool. Is that what you’re going for?

Such Gold: That’s definitely what we’re going for. We all come from a very hardcore and pop-punk influenced background.  4/5 of us were in hardcore bands before we formed Such Gold – Nate and Devon were in two together – Words We Spoke and Heavy Hearted – and Ben and Tim were in a melodic hardcore band called Blunt Force. Tim and Devon were also in a pop-punk band together with original singer Kyle, called A Lowercase You (which Nate almost became a part of), and Devan played drums in a pop band Museums.

DS: I’ve always thought of New York as a pretty musically vibrant state. It has a long history of hardcore and punk rock music. What are some of your favorite local bands or just bands from your state? What are your favorite venues to play?

Such Gold: New York State is/was home to some truly incredible bands, without question. Some of our favorite NY bands include Snapcase, Buried Alive, H20, Achilles, How We Are, Another Breath, Polar Bear Club, Earth Crisis, Damiera, Fire When Ready, Marathon, Nakitomi Plaza, Lemuria…the list goes on. Our favorite upstate venues to play are Mohawk Place in Buffalo, The Dungeon/Velocity in Watertown, and Water Street Music Hall and Dubland Underground in Rochester.

DS: You have three releases out; the “2009 Demo”, “Stand Tall” and now “Pedestals” How do you think these releases compare with each other.  What’s it like to be on Mightier Than Sword / 6131 Records?

Such Gold: Well, the ‘2009 Demo’ and ‘Stand Tall’ are essentially the same; ‘Stand Tall’ has 2 additional songs we wrote and recorded after signing to Mightier Than Sword and decided we wanted to put out an EP.  ‘Pedestals’ has a much more dynamic, mature and well-rounded sound in comparison to ‘Stand Tall’. MTS/6131 are like family – we wouldn’t want to work with anyone else at this point in the game, and wouldn’t be anywhere without them. But there are other labels we hope to associate with and call family in the future.

DS: I’m curious, I noticed that all of your releases so far are EPs and not full-lengths is there any particular reason for this?

Such Gold: EP’s have just made the most sense for us, and kids have short attention spans these days. Truthfully, we’re just not ready to commit to a full-length yet. For now we’d rather concentrate our efforts into 5-6 solid songs at a time – it’s seemed to work well enough so far.

DS: Your latest ep “Pedestals” came out recently. You must be excited about that. What do you have to say about this EP?

Such Gold: We are extremely excited to finally have ‘Pedestals’ available in some form – we feel it represents us as a band much better than ‘Stand Tall’ did. Much of ‘Stand Tall’ was written in our younger years and was more or less “thrown together”. ‘Pedestals’ was our first opportunity to sit down and write with serious purpose.

DS: “Pedestals” features guest vocals from Kenneth Vasoli (Person L / the Starting Line) and Karl Buechner (Earth Crisis).  That’s cool! How did that come about?

Such Gold: First off we have to address the fact that we are SO excited to have been able to work with them on this EP. Our manager R.J. mentioned we might be able to get Kenny on the record – he put out material from Person L on his other label Academy Fight Song. We all grew up listening to The Starting Line, so it was a pretty big deal to potentially have Kenny sing on one of our songs. When we went in to record ‘Pedestals’ and found out our producer Greg ALSO knew Kenny from various projects he had worked on, we knew it was a sign that we had to ask him to sing on the EP.  As for Karl, our bassist Devon’s brother is a founding member and guitar player of Earth Crisis, so getting Karl was as easy as asking a good friend if he wanted to help us out.

DS: What are some of your favorite Such Gold songs and why?

Such Gold: We all can agree that “Four Superbowls, No Rings”, “You Always Know What’s Best”, “What’s Left Of You”, “Sycamore”, “So Close”, and “Gut Rot” are the favorites, although we truly love all of our songs the same. They’re fun to play, they’re in your face, they get great reaction at shows, and they say the most lyrically that we can all identify and agree with.

DS: So far you’ve been playing shows in the Northeast. Is their any chance of a full U.S. tour soon? Who are some bands you’d like to tour with in the future?

Such Gold: We have actually done 2 1/2 full U.S. tours and 1 east coast tour.  The first full U.S. was with our friends The Wonder Years and We Are The Union, the second was our tour out to Sound and Fury Fest 2010 with Transit and Man Overboard.  The half is a tour we did out to Denver and back with to meet up with A Loss For Words on their Motown Cover CD release tour. We’d definitely love to someday tour with bands like Set Your Goals, Four Year Strong, Comeback Kid, Bane, A Wilhelm Scream, Polar Bear Club, Propagandhi, Fireworks, Ambitions, Touche Amore, La Dispute, Defeater, Make Do and Mend, Hostage Calm, Pianos Become The Teeth and more up-and-coming bands like The Story So Far, Second To Last, Latin For Truth, and Last Call.

DS: What are some of your hobbies / interests outside of playing in the band?

Such Gold: Outside of the band? Huh? But seriously – we all enjoy our fair share of eating out, skateboarding, listening to music, and spending time with our friends and family. Ben is working on a good deal of solo material he hopes to release in the future, Tim has been working with his dad for a while on getting a new campground set-up in his hometown, Devon and Nate do a lot of work for the band…managing e-mails/press/interviews/social media, but also enjoy slinging pizzas together. Devon also has begun interning with our manager R.J. and working with some the other bands he manages, while Nate is playing a lot of PS3, planning a wedding and is currently doing some web design work with R.J.’s two labels – Mightier Than Sword Records and Academy Fight Song – and their associated artists. Devan loves eating out more than any of us, spends a great deal of time working on drum rudiments, is a great graffiti artist, and currently enjoys stretching his ears, apprenticing to be a tattoo artist, and being a level 8 super-vegan.

DS: What can we expect from the band in the future? What are your goals and plans?

Such Gold: Musically – we will more than likely have a series of splits and a full-length out by 3rd quarter 2011. We’ll be on tour for the majority of the year from this point on, and well into 2011. We’ll have one overseas tour under our belts by March 2011, with plans to head to UK/EU before the summer. We also really hope to be a part of Warped Tour in 2011 as well. We’d love to get across Canada, Japan and maybe even other parts of Asia before summer 2012, too. Don’t expect us to slow down any time soon.

DS: Thanks for agreeing to do this interview with Dying Scene. I hope you enjoy the site. Such Gold is a great band. Do have any last words?

Such Gold: Thanks for having us, thanks for the kind words, and thanks to everyone for your support! Get in touch with us on MySpace and Twitter – we love to be connected to our fans!

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