You Vandal Interview (Florida Pop Punk)

First off, state your name and role in You Vandal.

My name is Eric. I sing and sometimes play bass in You Vandal.

How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it?

I felt douchey trying to answer this myself, so I texted a few friends and got their opinions.

Jimmy from Away With You: "I would say it's the definition of pop-punk. Punk rock music with lyrics about girls."
Matthew Noah Chapman: "A sunny Alkaline Trio. Even though the lyrics can be pretty heavy, the music makes you happy."

Paddy O'Houlihan: "You Vandal makes me want to go fuck myself."

What’s the Pop Punk scene like in Florida?

There's not much going on here. Most of the activity seems to be going on in Jacksonville and down south around Miami. Those are the places we've seen rad turnouts. Vero Beach used to be great too, until Away With You broke up and their venue close down. There are a handful of local pop-punk bands in every city, but most of them seem to be younger bands that don't wind up lasting very long.

In general, I think there's a huge pop-punk following, but not enough sustained activity to develop a worthwhile scene.

You shot a music video for your song “Delta Beta Rush Week”. How did that come together?

Back in June 2009 we played a show with Such Gold in Rochester, NY. It was really awesome. Probably the best show of that tour. The director of the video, Matt, was actually at that show. He wound up moving to Orlando to study film at Full Sail University. He shot us an email saying that he wanted to do a video for us to use for his demo reel. He was offering to do it for free, so we were all stoked. We never thought we'd be able to afford to do a solid video. Gooch and I met up with Matt at a coffee shop in Orlando. We drank a ton of coffee, talked about movies, and tossed around some of the initial ideas for the video. It took a while to get it scheduled, but I'm stoked we got to do it. Thanks, Matt!

You recently re-recorded two of your old demo songs. They sound awesome! Do you plan on re-recording all of them?

Thanks a lot! At first we were only going to do about half of the old songs. Pretty much everything from the Summer Demo, minus "Old Yeller," plus the acoustic Dozer. But Alex actually got the session files for the Winter Demo from the dude that recorded it. He's already started remixing the drums and guitars, and it shouldn't be long before we re-record the bass and vocals. So yeah, we're doing all of the old stuff.

The current plan is to put them up for download one at a time as they get finished. When they're all done and we have a track-listing and artwork, we'll put the whole thing up for download. The sort-of-album will be called Revisions.

Your debut full length “Stories You Can’t Share” was one of my favourite records of 2010. Have you written any new material since then?

Yes. We have written a whole bunch of songs and fractions of songs. There are five on deck to be released as an album/EP-type thing. As soon as Revisions is completely released, we'll start putting out the new songs.

Do you have any upcoming shows or tours on the way?

There are definitely no tours in the near future, unfortunately. I'm about to try booking a couple dates in March. We might also wind up playing a last minute show this weekend in Gainesville.

When are you guys going to finally come to Canada (Toronto more specifically)?

I would love to visit Canda. I hear Toronto and Vancouver are both awesome. Well, I hear the whole country is awesome actually.

Our present options are: A) Those of us that can make time to tour do so, but with fill-in players for those who cannot participate. B) We plan trips to one city at a time and make it a band vacation where we also happen to play a show. C) I do acoustic shows and play all over the place by myself.

All those options are pretty shitty as far as we're concerned. Right now, we're just trying to put out as much music as we can to make up for the fact that we rarely play.

What’s your favourite show that you’ve played so far?

I would probably be this show we played at a coffee shop in Middle-of-Nowhere, Indiana. There was a huge folk band, Spraynard, us, and a local acoustic kid. A bunch of kids came out for the show, probably because there was nothing to do in that town, but I remember feeling like we played really well. We went off and the kids seemed really excited about it.

When the acoustic dude played, his girlfriend was outside crying. A car rolled up, she hopped in, and they drove off. You could see the whole thing through the giant storefront windows. The kid stopped playing mid-song, mumbled something about "I have to go," and ran out of the building. The whole thing was very bizarre and funny and sad.

What’s the strangest thing that has ever happened at a show or while on tour?

We actually booked a house show in Chicago via MySpace once. We got there and the dude who booked us turned out to be a 14-year-old kid. He hadn't told his neighbors there would be a show, and it was a very compact inner-city neighborhood. Hell, he hadn't even told his parents. The kid booked more than ten bands and promised all of them guaranteed payment. As more bands started showing up, he was looking more and more terrified. He had no idea what he had gotten himself into. Neighbors started coming out and yelling at bands for vans being parked all along the street. The neighborhood was actually Latin Kings gang territory. We don't give a damn about cops getting called on a show, but we didn't want angry neighbors calling Latin Kings on a show. We said "Fuck this," bailed, and got deep dish pizza with our Chicago buddies.

What can your fans expect from You Vandal in 2012?

A ton of songs to download! New stuff. Old stuff. Probably some covers too. A little bit of everything. Oh, and we will probably play some shows. Mostly in Florida. Maybe in Georgia or South Carolina.

Thanks for your time, any final comments?


Thanks for the interview! Now I'm going to eat tacos and watch "Party Down" on Netflix.