By Shandana Mufti, News Correspondent
When juggling shows with classes and assignments, touring as a band can get tough. Indie pop punk group Follow Your Hero has come to accept this.
“Summers are easy, but we got a week off here, let’s see if we can get on the road for a week,” said vocalist Kevin Garcia, a junior music industry major. “It makes it tough, it’s a little stressful, but we do what we can and it’s been pretty fun so far.”
Formed in 2009, the Boston-based band also includes College of the Holy Cross senior Jack Mason and Quinebaug Valley Community College second-year Joey Carvalho both on guitar. Ben Wilterdink, a senior who also attends College of the Holy Cross, plays bass, with Berklee College of Music student and drummer Adam Kirschner rounding out the lineup.
“It’s basically just a bunch of friends who all grew up together and somehow made it together,” Garcia said.
Follow Your Hero is in the studio finishing its latest recording due for release later this year. The band played at afterHOURS on Tuesday with fellow Northeastern band Actor|Observer.
The Huntington News sat down with Garcia before the show to find out what Follow Your Hero is all about.
Huntington News: How did you come up with your name?
Kevin Garcia: Basically, the way I describe it is a lot of bands just name their bands something that sounds catchy and has no meaning to them – it’s just a name. So, I wanted to have something that kind of encompassed our message as a band. The way I looked at it was, we all grew up with music being something that kind of was an escape or something that we loved doing, we looked up to, and us pursuing music was kind of like following what we looked up to with a hero. We kind of just wanted to send the message, “Just do what you love,” follow your hero.
HN: Who are your biggest influences? I hear a lot of early Blink-182 in your songs.
KG: Yeah, I’m a huge Blink-182 super-fan, so there’s a lot of that in there. What’s cool about us is everyone has their own influences individually, and we have a lot of stuff that we cohesively listen to. The Starting Line, huge influence of ours. I love The Early November, you know, Ace Enders – listen to a lot of his stuff. Jack’s really into a lot of the pop stuff. He also loves American Football, and we all love Transit. Transit’s huge for us; that’s a newer influence of ours. A lot of early pop punk and some post-rock stuff too, like Joey’s really into Modest Mouse and Coheed and Cambria, so they kind of all conglomerate into this odd indie pop punk sound that we’re kind of going for. In the new record, you’ll hear it a lot more – there’s a lot more influences that leak through than one genre-specific record.
HN: What’s your favorite Boston venue to play?
KG: We’ve played a handful of them. We’ve always had fun at the Middle East Upstairs. We also have played All Asia a couple of times. It’s more of a bar with a stage in the corner, and the last time we played there, we brought a good amount of people and we had kids crowd surfing and stage diving in the corner of this bar … I figured [the bartenders would] get pissed off – they’re not used to it. But they thought it was hilarious that we brought this punk rock show into a tiny little dive bar. It was fun.
HN: Do you guys have a lot of fans at Northeastern?
KG: I’m starting to see more and more. Whenever we play here, I used to tell my friends to come, like, “We’re at afterHOURS, come hang out and party.” And every time we play there, I see more and more new faces, which is cool. We announced a show for next week at afterHOURS, and I got a lot of emails from different people being like, “I’m excited to see you guys there.” People I didn’t know existed.
HN: Is your new record going to be radically different to your previous releases?
KG: It’s definitely a departure. It’s a little bit more mature, and it’s grown up, but it still keeps that like, driving pop punk feel, upbeat stuff. We didn’t leave that behind. It’s just a little bit different guitar work, [and] vocally it’s a little bit different. I got really into the writing and the vocals on this one. We’ve got a lot of personal stuff written in there too, which is cool.
HN: Where do you get inspiration for writing lyrics?
KG: Anything. Anything that affected me [the] last couple of years. I’ve ripped a couple of girls to pieces in some songs. I tend to be one of those guys. I had a really tough year and a half, kind of figuring out myself last year, and going through some depression … I don’t hide anything in my songs. I just go for it and just throw it out there and see if anyone wants to grab on. There’s a lot of darker lyrics on this one – it’s not as happy as the first record. Sonically, it’s not sad and depressing. The lyrics just get really deep.
HN: Do you guys have any odd pre-show rituals?
KG: Yes. Some of which cannot be discussed in public. It’s mostly just psyching each other up and doing stupid things. Like when we’re on tour, we’d sit in the van and just listen to something ridiculous, usually by Enter Shikari, that intro to their record, that like, oddly transformer voice [on the songs “Common Dreads” and “Solidarity”]. We would just sit and blast that until our ears would be like blown out, and then we’d be like, “All right, let’s go play a show.” Terrible idea, but it was fun.
HN: What would your dream tour be, if you could play with any bands?
KG: It would probably be something like Blink, Everytime I Die, and obviously us, and throw in like, Transit on there, and probably something like – I listen to a lot of early pop punk – so something like New Found Glory on there would be cool. Just something like a bunch of bands I used to listen to coming together.
HN: Why should people who have never listened to you give Follow Your Hero a chance?
KG: There’s something for everyone in our songs. It’s accessible. Pop punk kids like it cause it has that pop punk feel, it’s low-key enough for someone who likes the pop-ier side of stuff, it’s not too in-your-face, it’s not too loud. I try to be as honest as I can, and usually people can respect honesty in lyrics. Everyone can take something away from it, I think. Almost everybody.
HN: Describe your band in one word.
KG: Energetic. A lot of people who don’t previously love our sound will start to like it a lot more when they see us live. We put a lot of energy into our performance, we like to really get nuts and make it more of an event, a party. Everyone have fun – get the crowd involved.
