Girl Scouts Interview/Music

Bandcamp

(rad ass dudes)

(with sick jams)

(and sick words)

1. How did you come up with the name Girl Scouts, and when did the band start?

We started in January of 2011. Before Girl Scouts we were all in a post-rock band called Pursuit with some other people but that kinda slowed down a lot, so it was a fun side project. As far as the name goes, it really doesn't mean anything, we thought it was just kind of goofy and it would be great if the Girl Scouts of America ever sued us for it.

2. What are you currently working on now?, whether it be new music, a full length, or a tour?

Right now, we're working on an ep that our friend Jim McDaniels, who writes for Circling the Drain, is going to help us press it on some vinyl. We've all been really busy this summer, and unfortuantly haven't been able to practice and write as much as we'd like to. But we're thinking about touring this winter or something like that.

3. How long do you see Girl Scouts lasting?, Is it a short lived project?

I really haven't even thought about that, so I guess it'll go till we all decide to call it quits.

4. What has been the best show, or atleast, group of people that you have played with so far?

Dane Fallon Fest in June at the now deceased IHOP Estate (XripX) was probably the best show we've played this year so far. Shared the basement with our best buds in Marietta. The lineup was too good to be true.

4. What do you hope to do in the future?

I hope we can get this goddamn record done sometime in the near future and hopefully book a tour soon. We haven't really played outside of PA that much, so it'd be awesome to get on the road.

5. Has your writing changed on the new record?

I'm not really sure. We are writing the same way we always do, and it definatly sounds different. Its still in the process of being written, so we'll see what happens.

6. How vast would your tour be?

Probably cover all seven continents.

7. When you started the band, what did you want to do with it? Like how big are you trying to get.

It wasn't supposed to be anything but a side project. But we played a couple shows and our now good friend Patrick Loundas offered to record us, so we just put it out and some people liked it.

8. How do you feel that you have grown as a group? From you just saying that you didn't expect much to now so many people dig your fig. Did you expect that?

As a group I feel we're still all the same. We grew up in the same town and have been playing music together since middle school. None of us ever expected anything of it. It was and still is a really interesting and cool experience. In all the bands we had before this, we'd never had so much fun playing shows.

Our Sunday Affairs New Music/Interview

City of Dogs

(music)

(new)

(interview)

1. How did Our Sunday Affairs come about? Where did the name originate?

Oh boy, haha, OSA originally began during my freshman year of highschool (i think 2009?) when I met Tom, who plays guitar. We started out as an awful screamo and metalcore band called Parkways at Faultlines. We ended up just changing our line up and name until Tom came up with Our Sunday Affairs. To be honest, I dont know the full story behind it but after we settled on it bad situations just began to occur on Sundays. It became a sort of self fulfilling prophecy I guess.

2. How has the writing changed as your band progressed through the years?

It's undergone some pretty big changes. When we started writing our first ep (Smiles) we were all still pretty young and Tom was the only one with any sort of band experience. At that time he was pretty much writing all the instrumentals except the vocals. He was also super dedicated to write in only standard tuning in an attempt to break away from the genre's norm. Welcome Home Kiddo was the first time we played around with alternative tunings and we've decided to stick with it I think. The current line up also writes their own parts and we're all a lot more open and communicative as a band, so it's not just Tom and I coming up with everything on our own anymore. 

3. How do you come up with such raditudinal vocals?

There's no real method behind it. I'm not a musician, I don't play any instruments, so it really has no theory behind it or anything. I just sort of sing whatever comes to me when I hear the music. Often times it'll take a while for me to choose one melody over another or even just come up with one I like.

4. Do you write music that you feel others relate to? Or is that just something that happens when you guys write whatever you want to?

I'd actually say we do the exact opposite haha, or I do anyways. If you look at some of the lyrics in We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants, they're all very personal and specific to what I was going through at the time. I'm not saying it's impossible to relate to our music or that no one has ever felt the same way I have, because that's obviously not true. I just don't really go out of my to try to make everything we write as personal as Combo Move or something.

5. Now is there a favorite track, or show that you have played? 

Well my personal favorite is definitely It Turned My Tongue Blue. As we write and put out more and more music it's easy to grow sort of disenchanted with the old songs. I think our favorite show would have to the first time we played Maryland. We were still relatively unknown then and it was the first show we played where a bunch of people knew the lyrics and got really into it. We also got to meet a lot of great people who would go onto to become some of our best friends.

6. Now that you have this new album have you stopped writing? Or do you continue to write while you still play the new songs?

We're pretty much always writing. Right now we're taking a little break in order to book a tour and have a bit more personal time, but we've already started writing for our next release which we're planning on being our first full length.

7. How do you feel now that you have some more popularity behind you moving forward with this tour and the new releases? Does it still feel the same as it did when you first started the band? How long do you anticipate it going on for? Hopefully there is not an abrupt end to the wonderful life of Our Sunday Affairs.

I can't stress enough how good it feels to know that we have the amount of listeners we do. When we started, we were just a couple of kids dicking around in a basement and we still are, but all of a sudden people seem to want to listen to us! It's super gratifying and mind blowing to know that some people get as much out of it as they do. We're all super happy with the way City of Dogs turned out and we can't wait to go on tour and meet a bunch of new people. But at the same time, we want to just sit down and write more because we know it'll reach more people than anything before. I suppose it's about finding a balance between keeping it fun while still trying to be at least semi-professional with it. I feel look at it nearly the same way I did two years ago and I think you have to in order to write music that you really believe in. We just put more pressure on ourselves. We've always planned on having OSA be a sort of temporary thing, seeing as how three out of the four of us are still in highschool, but we still have a whole year before we graduate and we're definitely going to work as hard as possible to write as much quality music we can while still being able to play shows in new places.