I'll set the scene for you;
The date is May 13th, 2012. I'm at a show at the Hunter Community Center in Clawson, Michigan. My good friends in the greatest band on earth, Sunlight Ascending, are playing, there are some acoustic tunes by Nick Urb, and I'm surrounded by my then bandmates. I'm obsessed with screamo. For the most part, anything that isn't from 1997-2004 that sounds like a dying muppet on vocals with recordings that sounds like it was recorded underwater in a metal trash can, is completely off my radar.
In come Great Reversals.
If my memory serves me correctly, they went on last after Sunlight Ascending. Like all bands that night, they played on the gymnasium floor, and were the only hardcore band that played that night. Admittedly, my knowledge of straight forward "hardcore" was very limited at the time. I had heard xDeathstarx, xBishopx, Recon, and a few other christian metalcore bands though my friend's brother, but nothing in the realm of what Great Reversals had in store that night. Aaron, the vocalist, spoke in between each song about the meaning of his lyrics, and events in his life that had affected him. The riffs were punchy and heavy, but were not just "ignorant" breakdowns like the bands I had mentioned previously. I was completely blown away by the performance and it made me reconsider what I thought the meaning of hardcore was.
I can't recall if I had spoken to any of the members that night, but over the years, I would go on to see Great Reversals countless times, even seeing them in a different country when I tagged along to Exalt's record release show in Kitchner, Ontario. The core members have been Aaron on vocals, Alex on guitar, and Eric on drums. After I had seen them at the community center, it seemed like I'd see Eric at every show I'd go to. Mainly because he would go on to book a good majority of the shows in the metro-Detroit scene at Genesis Church in their basement. I've always admired how much he actually cared for hardcore, and the effort he puts not only into his band, but the scene as a whole. The time management skills become even more interesting when you factor in that he's a husband, father of four, and a high school teacher.
When I decided I wanted to start doing interviews on people whose music has had a significant impact on my life, I approached Eric after doing my first one. I finally got around to it and he immediately agreed. He also runs his own blog where I 100% got the idea to do this for myself, which I'll link at the end. Enjoy!
NJ: It must be strange to be on the other side of this inquiry, but talk about your childhood and what kind of house you were raised in? Was there a prominent music or art presence?
ES:I grew up in a really loving family.... My parents got together when they were really young and are still together 40 or so years later. I have a little sister who is awesome... Of course I terrorized her some when we were little, mostly because she was listening to Debbie Gibson or Belinda Carlisle haha.
We lived on the east side of Detroit until I was going into 4th grade, then we moved out to Royal Oak. My dad was a social worker, when I was little my mom babysat and worked at a grocery store.... Eventually she went back to school and got a degree in I.T. which was when our family started movin' on up or whatever. There was all kinds of music around when I was a kid. I grew up going to church every Sunday, and it was a small congregation of maybe 100 or so people, 20-30 of whom were my family members. My aunt was the pianist, my dad and uncle sang in the choir, etc. Every Sunday after church we would go to my grandma's for lunch with everybody.... Aunts, uncles, cousins, the whole squad. My aunt would often jump on the piano after lunch and we'd sing hymns or whatever. To this day we go to my aunts on Christmas Eve and the whole family sings. I didn't think much of it when I was a kid but as an adult its pretty awesome and I'm guessing pretty rare. So beyond church music, I was exposed to all kinds of other stuff. My dad was a huge classic rock guy... Probably his favorite was the J Geils Band, but he saw all the legends, and he would always tell me stories about seeing Zeppelin and watching Jimmy Page play the guitar with the violin bow, when he saw Ozzy bite the head off a bat, and he would rave about Keith Moon being the greatest drummer he'd ever seen, and he loved Neil Young. And oh yeah, I am named after Eric Clapton.... So definitely lots of rock n roll at the center of our household. The first concert my dad ever took me to was lame ass Richard Marx at Chene Park.... I think because it was a free show. A couple years after that him and my uncle took my cousin and I to the Silverdome to see some real shit....The Rolling Stones with Living Color opening.
NJ: How did you go from seeing and hearing those "bigger" bands, to getting into DIY hardcore? Also, how did your parents feel about you getting into this "alternative" lifestyle? Were they supportive at all?
ES: Well, so I was super into hip hop from late elementary school and into middle school, and one day I was at my buddy Dan Till's house and he threw on the cassette of Helmet's "Meantime". I don't know this for a fact but just prior to that I believe, the soundtrack to the movie "Judgement Night" had come out which featured lots of collabs between hip hop and metal groups.... Helmet had a song with House of Pain, who along with Cypress Hill were our faves back then.
Anyway, Dan throws on "Meantime" and I was hooked. I did not really like any guitar based music at that time, but there was something about it.... Maybe the stop/start grooves, I dunno. But from then on I started delving into heavier stuff.
Obviously Rage Against the Machine was blowing up around that time, but you also had Biohazard, Dog Eat Dog, etc. Headbangers Ball was awesome back then so I started watching that regularly. I saw the video for Sick of It All's "Step Down" and felt like a whole new world was opening up before my eyes. Back then there was this magazine called Metal Maniacs that you could get everywhere, even like Meijer and shit, so one day I picked up a copy because it had Sick of it All in there. In the back of Metal Maniacs they had this little section called "the zine scene" where they profiled actual fanzines and they had a write up about this zine from NYHC called In Effect. There was an issue that had Sick of It All in it so I stuffed 3 or 4 bucks in an envelope with a little note and ordered my first In Effect.
The dude who did that zine was this guy Chris Wynne and he wrote me back right away and sent me a copy of the zine. We basically became pen pals and he would send me lists of all kinds of shit that I should check out (by the way, Chris still rules and has taken his work digital, everybody should frequent ineffecthardcore.com). So before I knew it I was getting into Civ, Shelter, VOD, all the New York bands. By that time I was hitting up shows for those bigger bands at St. Andrews and The Shelter when they would come through. Also, because I grew up in the church and am a Christian, by my senior year of high school I was following all the Tooth and Nail bands and whatever. So probably summer after my senior year if I remember correctly Strongarm and Overcome came through and played at this church in Livonia. Well Overcome had this roadie with them named Cori Hale who had his zine with him called Heuristic. I chatted a bit with him and picked up a copy of the zine of course. While he was road-dogging for a Christian band, Cori was much more on the vegan, animal rights political tip. So same as with Chris, I started writing him and he would send me lists of stuff to check out. Being that he was from Arizona i was getting brought up to speed on West Coast stuff as he was recommending Unbroken, Groundwork, Absinthe, Nineironspitfire, etc.
So by the time I went off to college in Grand Rapids in the Fall of 96 I had totally fallen in love with hardcore. As fate would have it, I got matched up with one of the 2 or 3 hardcore kids on campus as my roommate, so once we met up we started swapping CDs and records and then it was all over. I went to school during the day but at night it was all hardcore all the time. We would drive basically all over the Midwest to catch shows, whether it was a weekend or a Tuesday night. Mind you, gas was like 95 cents a gallon at that point so it didn't really matter haha.
As for my parents, they were always super supportive of anything I wanted to do. My dad was a social worker so he thought it was cool that a lot of the stuff I was checking out had a sociopolitical edge, and just as I mentioned before, he was a big fan of rock music, so he was down.
There were a couple of years there (probably 98 and 99) where for Michigan Fest my parents would let a shit ton of people stay with us for the fest. I think in 99 we literally had like 35 kids crashing at my parents house. There were even people I didn't even know, just like friends of a friend who needed a place to crash. My parents thought it was awesome. My dad loves to cook and take care of people, so he was up bright and early cooking everyone eggs and oatmeal and shit haha.
NJ: So I want to talk more about the scene in Grand Rapids in particular during that time. Granted I don’t live in Michigan anymore so I can’t say for sure, but I can’t remember a scene really being there. Detain is the only band that really is prominent in the Detroit scene that hails from there. What was it like back then?
ES:I lived in Grand Rapids from 96-02. The scene there was pretty small, and like Detroit, had different pockets. When I first got there freshmen year there was this shiiiiiiitty bar called the Reptile House down on Division Street where some of the bigger hardcore bands would play. Madball, Downset, Orange 9mm, stuff like that. But I never really remember there being any local Grand Rapids bands that opened those shows; there probably were, but Grand Rapids definitely didn't have any heavy, moshy hardcore bands that I was aware of at that time.
Then being west Michigan there was definitely a Christian music scene. So you had the big Tooth and Nail punk bands like MxPx that would play (I don't even remember where), and then eventually this little coffee shop called Skeletones opened up. The one Grand Rapids band I remember playing a lot that was actually decent was this band called Remember When, who were sort of like a cool emo band.
Then by probably my junior year I met this guy Yann Kerevel who had this screamy band called With Arms Still Empty. Yann was/is a great guy and he used to book a lot of awesome shit at this little art gallery called the Ten Weston Theatre. The shows at Ten Weston eventually became what I considered to be the most important part of the Grand Rapids scene. Yann's girlfriend M.J. was from Milwaukee so she had lots of connections there, and at that time Milwaukee fucking ruled! So pretty much once a month Yann and M.J. would be booking shows for Forstella Ford, Since By Man, Seven Days of Samsara, Kung Fu Rick, etc. Other memorable shows Yann did were The Assistant, Lack, Examination of The..., Cobra Kai, Buried Inside, Lack, Atom and His Package, etc. Definitely more of the Ebullition/Heartattack vibe in terms of both sound and ethics. Aside from Yann's band With Arms Still Empty, the other local G.R. band that eventually popped up was this more grindy/powerviolence type band called Don Knotts who were pretty cool.
NJ: Whenever I seem to talk about an older band with you or one gets brought up, chances are you booked them somewhere in the past and know a member or two. What got you into booking shows and how did you get started doing that? Did it predate any musical projects?
ES: I got into booking mostly because of the record label that I started with my college roomie Matt, and a few other friends we met in town going to shows, Brian, Jeff, and Mike. So my roommate Matt was from Maryland and he knew a lot of the good Christian hardcore bands from that area (Zao, Sower/Seasons in the Field, Pensive, Pink Daffodils, etc.). When the original incarnation of Zao broke up and Jesse reconstituted the band with Dan, Russ, and Brett, Matt knew those dudes so we got to book a show on what I'm pretty sure was their first little weekend run of shows. That definitely was not just me booking it, it was all 5 of us. We wound up booking Zao I think 3 times, Embodyment, Training for Utopia, and then I think once when I was gone for the summer they did a huge Zao/Spitfire/Stretch Armstrong show. So anyway, from doing those shows I kind of got a handle on what it took so I did a small handful of shows myself from probably 99-02. Undying/Prayer for Cleansing, Creation is Crucifixion, Underoath/Chalice, Hopesfall, Reversal of Man/Combatwoundedveteran, I think it was literally just those 5 shows haha.
I got married and moved back to Detroit in 2002 and stopped booking. I of course kept going to shows but never really started booking again until probably 2010 or so after Static Age and the Metal Frat kind of fizzled out and I saw a need for someone to start putting stuff together for small scale hardcore bands around here.
Oh yeah I think I also booked 7 Angels a couple times in G.R. too .
The flier from Underoath's first tour where Eric booked them
NJ: Running a label and booking shows in the pre-internet days sounds like a completely different world from how it is today. What were some of the hardships of doing that before the digital era?
ES: Well, I don't really think I experienced hardcore in the pre-digital age haha. By 95 or 96 everyone had slow-ass dial up internet so you just emailed people and found out about stuff on message boards or whatever. Far more primitive than social media today, but the basics were there
But beyond that stuff, like I alluded to earlier there was a lot of letter writing. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure the Reversal of Man show I booked I did via writing letters. I used to exchange letters with Greg from Trial, and I always ordered records by just stuffing cash in an envelope. I used to order all the time from this label Positive Face from PA who put out the first Indecision and Shutdown 7 inches (those were the first time I saw clear vinyl and I remember pooping my pants haha), Immigrant Sun Records who was probably my favorite label/distro at the time, SA Mob Records run by EMS from Brother's Keeper as well as ordering all the time from individual bands. Zine culture was also much stronger during that period, so that's where you had to turn to get news and read interviews. My favorite zines were of course Heartattack, as well as Second Nature, Dogprint, Status, Heuristic, Punk Planet, Clamor, I Stand Alone, and so many more I'm sure I am forgetting.
NJ: After college, you moved back to Detroit in 02 and you weren’t booking shows. I understand that you briefly tried out on drums for not only one of my favorite Michigan local bands, but one of my all time favorite bands, Trying Times. Describe your first musical endeavors in between 02 and when you started booking shows again, and how you got into playing the drums.
ES: So yeah in August of 2002 Steph and I got married. I was in Grand Rapids at the time and she was in New Jersey, but we were both from Metro Detroit so we moved back here. We had our first son in 2003, I started teaching, and in 2004 started grad school. So definitely no time to book shows or play in bands, I just went to shows periodically and did a little zine called Holy Shit! Actually my first two issues were done in G.R., I did a third issue in 03 I think, maybe 04'.
As far as playing drums, I gotta re-wind that tape a little haha. So after having been engrossed in hardcore for several years and having so many friends in music, starting to dabble in booking and label stuff, it was only natural that I wanted to learn to play something. So in my infinite wisdom I thought playing guitar or bass would be too hard for me (too precise) so I decided to try drums (you can't miss right?) I bought a shitty Ludwig drum set from a shop in G.R. for i think like 300 bucks and started making racket on it in my dorm room haha. We had loud hours from like 4-6 every day and I would beat the shit out of it. Everybody in my dorm wanted to kill me I'm pretty sure. So yeah anyway, I had zero musical training or ability and thus had no actual idea what I was doing. By around 99 I had been hanging around with Yann enough that he asked me if I wanted to do a band together. I told him I didn't have the first clue, but yes, time to learn by doing. So he has a buddy Anthony who could play bass, and I, surprise surprise asked Aaron if he wanted to try vocals. So we went to work once a week in my basement and started blasting away. Yann and Anthony wanted to do something thrashy like Tear it Up, Aaron and I wanted to do something like Bane or Trial (I know, you're shocked haha). So I guess maybe it sounded kinda like that. We were called Prophet of the Dawn and we played from like 99 or 2000 until 02. We did a 4 or 5 song demo plus three songs for a split with this band Swimming to Pinpoints, who were a year or two older than us and worshiped all things Dischord. It was supposed to be a split 7" but none of us knew how to put out a record, so my friend Ben eventually put the songs out on tape.
So anyway, I met Steve in what I think was 06' when Have Heart, Verse, and Shipwreck played at the 2500 Club. 6 months or a year before that I had jammed a couple times in a screamy project with a couple kids but ultimately decided I couldn't sustain it. However, I ultimately regretted that decision, so not only did I roll into this Have Heart show by myself, but I rolled in with flyers I had made with pictures of myself saying that I wanted to drum for a band (mind you, I still could not drum for shit). As luck had it, Trying Times had set out a stack of CDs they called "the looking for a drummer demo. I saw that and of course plopped my stack of flyers right next to that bad boy. By the end of the show Steve had accosted me and said "Is this you!?!?" to which I replied "Of course haha". So anyway, I took a few weeks to try to learn the songs and eventually went out and jammed with them. Buuuuut, my chops were not nearly strong enough so I got the old thanks but no thanks. However, Steve and I hit it off quite well and once they got a drummer I started seeing them a bunch. We became even tighter friends, and one fateful night a year or so after they had broken up, Steve asked me if I wanted to start jamming with him on something new. Thus Great Rev was born.
NJ: That leads perfectly into my next curiosity. How did Great Reversals form, and how did you go about finding the members? Obviously you and Aaron had Prophet before and you mentioned you and him were all for doing something in vain of Bane and Trial, but were there any other tryouts that didn’t make the cut?
ES: Yeah so as I alluded to, Steve and I had become friends, and one night in what must have been 08', we rolled out to Static Age to see Another Breath, one of the greatest bands of the 00's. It had been about a year since the demise of Trying Times, so Steve was itching to play again, and so on the drive home from that show he just kinda said "Hey, I know you couldn't pull off the Trying Times material, but would you want to try to start something new?" I immediately said yes, and so we set out to do a simple 90's style hardcore band. Our first practice was in January of 09'. Aside from Steve and myself, we had Kyle Callert ("shitty Kyle") jam with us for a couple of months. He helped us write the 1st song on the demo. Steph would always make fun of me when he came over to drive to Steve's for practice because I was 30 years old and he was literally like 17, haha. Anyway, Kyle wound up being grounded half the time, so his tenure in the Rev was cut short. After Kyle left (or maybe even during, can't remember), we had one practice with Rorik from Cloud Rat/Under Anchor. We were stooooked on the idea of jamming with Roar but ultimately he decided the drive all the way from Mt. Pleasant was just gonna be too far. So we just had one practice with him at which we wrote the 2nd song on the demo, and that was it. So after jamming for 5 or 6 months, writing 2 songs and still only having the two of us as members, Steve remembered that he knew this dude Alex from going to shows that had mentioned he could play guitar. So he asked Alex if he would be into it, and Alex was. Right off the bat, Alex said he had a buddy named Sam that would be interested in bass
So yeah, very humble origins. Several of us who barely knew how to play our instruments, 4 out of the 5 of us who had either never been in a serious band or hadn't been one in a long ass time, etc. We learned the 2 songs we already had started on, wrote 3 more, recorded a demo in the Fall of 09' (which was a miserable experience) and played our first show up in Mt. Pleasant Thanksgiving weekend of 09'. So we are pushing 10 years this year. Fucking wild.
NJ: You brought up that you wanted to bring you children to a show, but not one where there would be potential violent moshing at the show, which I feel like has exploded in the last few years. Would you agree with this? Having been into hardcore for so many years, what are the major differences you spot compared to when you started going to shows? What are your favorite, and least favorite things about the current “scene” today?
NJ: How was the demo recorded and why was it so miserable?
ES: Well, it was miserable almost entirely because of me, haha. First off, my kids were little at that time and were waking up at all hours of the night, so I think I got like 3 hours of sleep the night before. But mostly, as I mentioned earlier, I just hadn't played the drums in a band in a very long time, had not recorded in a very long time. So I was just a total mess trying to lay down the tracks. And we are talking simple hardcore songs, haha. I just kept messing up and had to keep starting over. At one point I remember looking into the control room and seeing Chris who was recording us just with his head in his hands slumped over his computer looking like he wanted to kill himself. Seeing that and knowing how nervous and frustrated I already was kinda hit me like a dagger. One of the other infamous moments of Rev folklore is that Punknews.org reviewed our demo. The review overall was not very positive, but in particular the writer mentioned that "the drums sound like the drummer was physically tired" hahahahahaha which of course was very perceptive because indeed I was exhausted. That, and plus I just generally lacked awareness about my instrument so I hadn't even bought new heads for the recording session. So yeah, just generally hot garbage on my end.
NJ: After the demo, and a split with a local band called They Come In Waves (if my great rev history serves me right) you released the EP To The Ends Of The Earth, which took a break from Aaron’s philosophical and thought-provoking lyrics, into your territory. The opening track talks about raising your oldest son with disabilities, which is no doubt a very personal subject. The last track also encompasses the same themes, but more on the lines of rescuing your son from as you say “this muted shell.” I know when I used to see Great Reversals play those songs while playing shows on that record, you used to talk about your lyrics for that EP. Could you expand on your lyrics and what it’s like to raise a son that is deaf and autistic? How did the idea come to fruition for you to take the helm for writing lyrics for these songs?
ES: Yeah so my biggest motivation for wanting to do the band was to have some sort of outlet to express all the stuff I had on my chest about Elijah. The first 5 years were just so incredibly difficult. From discovering that he had a hearing impairment, to then discovering that he had a cognitive impairment, to discovering that he had autism; it was just a whirlwind of shit that I did not feel prepared to deal with. He was really miserable. If you were driving in the car and you stopped at a red light he would start screaming and thrashing, when you took him to the grocery store or out to eat or to a family birthday party he was often explosive,and it was just impossible to feel like we could live a "normal" life. As a parent you have these dreams for your kids for who they will be, what they will become, and all of that was just shattered. When he was a real little guy he used to love to go for looooong walks, just walk aimlessly. He loved the major roads so he could watch traffic. We would always have to walk past the park at the end of our street where kids would be playing baseball, soccer, basketball, climbing on the monkey bars, and it would just kill me.... I would sob uncontrollably while on a walk with my kid, because I knew that would never be him; it was gut-wrenching. In addition, as a person of faith I was really torn... On the one hand I was praying for some sort of miraculous healing and was frustrated that nothing was happening. On the other hand I had to acknowledge that my faith teaches me that we are all bearers of God's image; fearfully and wonderfully made. So I was wrestling with all that, and I'm still wrestling with all that if I'm being honest. So yeah man, I just needed some outlet to scream at the heavens, to scream at the world, to scream at myself. I used to type song titles into my phone, just of different ideas that I intended to write lyrics around, but assumed I would never be able to do anything with. So when the band started I knew I wanted to use them for something, I just wasn't sure how it would work or if the guys would be into it. Raising a kid with autism isn't exactly right up there with straight edge, veganism, and being stabbed in the back as far as hardcore lyric topics go, so I just didn't know if they'd be willing to go there so to speak. But ultimately they did and it's honestly the greatest gift those 4 guys could ever have given to me and I'm still so grateful that they allowed me to use our dumb little band to channel all that pain.
So anyway, once we decided we were gonna do it, I took those titles I had in my phone, and wrote 8 or 9 sets of lyrics. Aaron then took the ones he felt he could work with and did his thing - made them more poetic, made them flow, etc. As I said, Aaron and I have been best friends for many years so he knew what I was trying to say and he was able to take the incredibly raw emotions I had spilled onto those pages and make something beautiful out of them. And then Steve, Alex, and Sam were able to work with me to create music that was tailored to each set of lyrics, that would capture the vibe of what was being expressed lyrically. I'm not sure if that is our best record, but it will of course always be the one that I will cherish the most.
NJ: I think it’s natural to have a crisis of faith (if a strong phrase like that can be used in this context) over an event like that in your life. Personally, that record holds a special place in my heart just because of the content of it. I don’t think many bands nowadays would get that personal when it comes to songwriting.
You’re pretty open about your faith and even have had the connections to throw some of the best shows I’ve ever been to at Genesis Church in Royal Oak, Michigan. I wasn’t raised religious and can’t see myself ever having kids, so I’m curious as to how your faith and your extensive period in the punk and hardcore subculture has shaped you as a parent. The current political climate can paint a pretty bleak picture for our future, so I’m wondering if you have trouble being optimistic about the future your kids will inherit from today’s times?
ES: It's funny because for most people who grow up in hardcore and punk, anything having to do with Chistianity is anathema, but for me a lot of it goes hand-in-hand. I discovered straight edge through the hardcore scene, but it fits right in with things from my faith that talk about self-control. I discovered vegetarianism and animal rights through hardcore but the Bible talks about being "stewards" of God's creation. I'm pretty sure confining animals in small cages their whole lives only to slaughter them in pursuit of profit would not fit any model of stewardship. Punk and hardcore in general is about not fitting in and standing up for the little guy or those who are oppressed. Jesus was basically a homeless dude who was hanging out with lepers, and eventually got murdered by the government.... What's more punk than that? Haha. Obviously the church and institutionalized religion have caused untold suffering all through history and today is generally associated with oppressing women, LGBT folks, etc, etc. etc. There is plenty of valid and necessary critique/rejection of all that bullshit. But for me, a lot of my faith principles line up squarely with stuff that I learned along the way going to hardcore shows.
In terms of parenting, I guess we just try to emphasize the stuff that we feel is at the heart of our faith: love, compassion, empathy, putting the needs of others before yourself, etc. Having Elijah in our family actually gives our other boys lots of opportunities to live that stuff out and to see that people with different needs are not bad or weird, they shouldn't be shunned, and we have to try to take care of each other. Beyond that, we raise the kids vegetarian, so that's another small way in which the kids know they are different because most of their peers at school eat meat of course. We have conversations about why we don't eat meat, which of course sometimes leads to them having conversations with their peers about it.
Dr. King said that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, and I'm trying like hell to hold onto that thought right now. But like you mentioned, we are in bleak times at the moment politically, the bleakest I feel like I've ever seen. There are so many dangerous aspects to the Trump presidency, but I feel like the most dangerous is the assault on reality itself that is being waged every day. Just yesterday we saw Trump try to say he doesn't know anything about Wikileaks, when in the 2016 campaign he praised Wikileaks literally dozens of times. There is fucking video of it, tons of video. But Trump lives in his own reality and he wants us to deny the very things that are right before our eyes and ears. It's totally Orwellian, and as a Civics teacher I have to think about this stuff all day every day. I still feel like we are living though some kind of national nightmare.
But I also feel like things changed in the flash of an eye so I know its possible they can flash back. I mean, rewind to 2015; Gay marriage had just been legalized, the economy, while still structurally unequal in many significant ways had basically recovered from the awful recession, and President Obama, for all his blemishes, was basically a super articulate, thoughtful, cool ass black dude in the Oval Office. Not trying to say everything was hunky dory, but as compared to today, shit was moving in the right direction however slowly and incrementally.
And then overnight we had basically a white supremacist regime come into power. Obviously those forces have always existed in American history but to have the pendulum swing so rapidly and forcefully is just mind-boggling.
While I don't have a ton of faith in the U.S. citizenry as a whole, deep in my core I really want to believe he will be swept out as quickly as he came in. In fact at this point I have to believe it or I will go insane haha.
It's funny because I have never considered myself to be a particularly patriotic person, but in the last 3 years as Trump has trampled all over the Constitution and our core principles, I have really found that a lot of my fundamental objections to what he is doing are rooted in an appreciation of basic things like separation of powers, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, etc. It's really made me wanna go to law school.
NJ: I like how you bring up how the critique of organized religion and say it’s valid. For me, I’ve always looked at you as like, the model Christian. Someone who recognizes that we all come from different places and as you said previously in our interview we are all “fearfully and wonderfully made."
An interesting quote I can recall from the Joe Rogan podcast of all places, is when Elon Musk said “I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than be pessimistic and right” and that’s how I feel about the current situation. I’m often left wondering “What can I do to make real change?” Since I live in a county and overall state that is against the current administration. So I have gravitated to the idea that you can start to make a difference in your community and set an example to those around you. That might sound corny reading it back but oh well.
So your vegetarianism bleeds in from your involvement in hardcore, and when I saw Great Rev for the Stalactite record release, I saw some of your children at the show. Have any of your kids shown an interest in playing an instrument or expressed that they like the music you play around them?
Judah plays guitar a little bit, we had him in lessons for a couple years but getting him to practice was becoming quite the battle so we've decided to back off for a while in hopes that he will gravitate back to it on his own terms.
Manny plays clarinet in the school band right now and is doing pretty well.
Asher asked for a drum set when he was 5 so we got him one for Christmas. We took him to a few lessons but I think he was too young and lacked the attention span to really focus so we pulled him out of lessons as well for now.
As for Manny and Judah coming to the record release show, I've been wanting to bring them to a show for a while, they are 10 and 11 so I feel like they are ready to at least dip their toes in a bit, but I've never wanted to bring them to a show with a lot of mosh/crowdkilling/bullshit. So I figured the vibe at our release show would be good, and I think it turned out great. They loved it, and Moynihan got everybody to start chanting "Kids rule" in the middle of our set which was hilarious.
But other than the show, they don't like it when I try to play hardcore stuff in the car. Judah will sort of tolerate it, but mostly they wanna listen to Post Malone or Imagine Dragons or whatever crap is on the radio. Obviously, I'm failing as a punk parent at this point haha.
ES: Ahhhh I'd say it's mostly the same... I guess I generally gravitate towards bands and people who share my understanding of hardcore, so in terms of the shows I go to and experience it isn't all that different, but clearly some stuff has shifted.
First and foremost, shows tend to be smaller. Not like every show was huge back in the day, but 100-300 people was pretty standard back then, even for bands who weren't that big. Today there is a very small universe of hardcore bands that can bring out that sort of a crowd, at least in a place like Detroit. Secondly, things are much more business-oriented now. Today there seems to be this whole ecosystem of middle management essentially: Booking agents, label reps, press people, etc. Granted, there was some of that back in the 90's, but today even really small bands have stuff like that. Bands that draw 50 kids have an agent and a guarantee. What? This of course has it's pros and cons. On the one hand it's awesome that more people can play in hardcore and punk bands in a sustainable way. Playing in a band beats working in an office any day, right? Buuuuuut, and this is a big but for me, I tend to like to keep my capitalism as far away from my hardcore as possible. Inevitably as money becomes a bigger part of the equation, stuff is gonna get watered down and compromises are gonna be made.
One of my favorite bands With Resistance had a record called "Real Hardcore Kids Have Day Jobs" and that essentially captures my feelings on the matter. I would never want to have my bills being paid be contingent on anything having to do with hardcore. It would kill the fun and the spirit of it for me. Another related aspect to hardcore becoming more professionalized is the phenomenon of the package tour. It seems like in the last 10-15 years you see very few bands touring by themselves or with one other band. It's almost always 3-4 bands with label sponsorships and whatever other goofy shit attached to it like a dumb "____ Across America" tour. Yes, it's cool and convenient to catch 3 or 4 good touring acts on a single night, BUT it doesn't exactly foster the development of a local scene. You have at most 1 or 2 locals playing these shows, which in turn leads to locals not really caring about building a hometown scene of bands, but caring more about getting some hype or blowing up or whatever so that they can impress the right person who will throw them on a package tour. This of course relates to the phenomenon of fest bands, where we now have 8 or 10 big fests around the country annually, and some bands who almost never play in their own city. They just play all the big fests and that's basically it. So they do a record every few years, play 4 or 5 shows a year, and do almost zero locally. Again, I understand that's an efficient approach. Most bang for your buck, play in front of a large number of people, etc. But it just seems counter to my personal sense of what hardcore and punk should be.
The last thing just has to do with content. When I was coming up, lyrics were the most important thing. So many bands had inserts in their records with essays explaining the songs, they would talk about the songs on stage, it was understood that the hardcore scene was meant to be a place focused on ideas and dialogue. That was at the heart of everything. Otherwise how is hardcore different from metal? It would just be a bunch of loud music with cool imagery but very little substance. So it was taken for granted that bands were there to take a stand on things and have something deeper to say. Even if it wasn't about politics or a social issue, there had to be SOMETHING. That sense seems to have been lost overall I would say. Now you have bands with 7 t-shirt designs and only 5 songs on an online demo, haha. Nobody knows the lyrics or is singing along because nobody is saying jack shit because it's not even worth repeating. So what do they do instead? They mosh like a ninja because it's about image. Now of course there was moshing back in the day, but you generally had the majority of the crowd up front singing along because they connected with the band on a deep level, and some people moshing in the back if they just wanted to lose their minds or whatever.
Anyway, I'm sounding like a grumpy as fuck old man here. I should of course emphasize that there are still lots of bands that do not match the description of what I'm offering above, who do have things to address, and who are using their platform to talk about issues, build community, etc. If there wasn't, I would have dropped out by now.
NJ: After To The Ends Of The Earth, you released a split (with one of the greatest bands of all time with some of my favorite people, Sunlight Ascending) an EP, LP, compilation track, then finally, your latest release Stalactite. Having listening to your band for going on ten years, I can see the progress in songwriting. Looking back, how would you say you’ve grown as a musician over the last ten years? (I just realized the demo came out in 2009) and how has the Rev’s songwriting, and practices changed over the years?
In terms of being a musician, I have gotten a lot better and more confident just because of practicing/playing consistently. For the first seven or so years of the band, we practiced once a week basically every single week, pretty much religiously. I have zero time to play my drums outside of band practice or at home, so just getting together every single week has been the key ingredient. The last few years because of member stuff and just getting increasingly busy our regiment has gotten a lot looser, but for years we ran a very tight ship. I always joke that we are not necessarily the best musicians, but we are VERY good at being a band. Whereas a lot of bands I've seen over the years are insanely talented, but they are completely flaky, disorganized, and simply can't get their shit together enough to really make much of an impact. Talent isn't enough; you have to have talent as well as organization/commitment. On the flipside, if you have organization and commitment, even if you can't play your instrument for shit, you'll eventually be okay (exhibit A; Great Reversals).
In terms of song-writing, it's pretty much always been the same. Alex, Steve, or Nik have been the 3 main song writers over the course of the band so they will bring a song to the table, we learn it, mess with, add to it, subtract from it, and then Aaron eventually writes lyrics to fit over top of it. When Steve was in the band it was a little more "jam" oriented, sometimes he would just bring a riff or a few riffs, and we would sort of flesh it out from there. Alex and Nik have almost always brought more complete songs to work on. But basically that's it. We usually make a shitty iPhone practice recording when we get a song to a place where we feel like it's a solid rough draft. I'm not sure about the others but I like to listen to those recordings a lot both to think about where we might improve or revise things but mostly to just get the songs "in my bones" so to speak so I can remember how to play them. From there like I said we may lengthen or shorten parts, maybe smooth out some transitions, etc. It usually takes 3 or 4 practices of messing with a song to feel like we have it where it needs to be. And then like I said usually Aaron will add lyrics after the fact. He typically has a couple sets of lyrics at a time that he is working on so then he just fits those lyrics to the songs based on feel, vibe, length, etc. Obviously for To the Ends I wrote the lyrics in advance so that was a little different as we wrote those songs musically to fit the vibe of the lyrics but generally it has been music first, then lyrics.
For the comp song "Jaws" we wrote that one in the studio and that's the only time we've ever done that. Ryan from Blasphemour Records hit me up like a week or two before we were going to track "Mere Mortals" asking if we wanted to be on this comp he was doing, but he wanted to be an exclusive song. We had 11 ready to go for the LP but felt like all of them were really necessary for the record in terms of flow, track order, etc. so we didn't wanna cut the LP short. So basically we could either write a new one while we were there or take a few months when we were done, write a new song and then go back to a studio to record it as a stand alone. My thinking was that we should just try to write a new one on the spot, because generally after doing a record we take a bit of a break from practicing, Andy has a killer studio but it's 5 hours away so going back there probably wouldn't happen, etc. Anyway, the dudes were nervous because we've never written that way, and I of course was too, but I figured "Fuck it, let's just give it a try".
So after the second night of tracking Andy left, and we just started messing around. Alex started throwing out a few riffs and we just put it together. It all came together pretty smoothly, to everyone's surprise haha. One thing I am particularly proud of on "Stalactite" is there is one guitar part and one drum part I came up with on the spot while we were going through playbacks in the studio that I suggested and that everyone agreed we should add. Like I alluded to before, I'm not a primary song writer for our band so I'm always a little hesitant to suggest ideas, and it's literally taken me almost a full decade to build that confidence, so the fact that those ideas made the cut is a tiny point of pride for me.
NJ: I also think a lot of the passion is gone. I won’t elaborate too deeply on that so I avoid sounding like a grumpy old man hahaha. But everything seems to have shifted from the quality of the content in your music, to the merchandise you have. I think I’m way too young to be the stereotypical “jaded hardcore guy” but that’s how I feel about things currently.
I think after almost ten years as a band, you still try and incorporate different elements and haven’t become stale sounding. You’ve even gotten to do some touring weekends here and there. So my next question Is what’s next on the horizon for great reversals? Are there any bucket list things you have for the rev? Any other secret musical projects you have on the side?
Well, 2019 has proven challenging thus far haha. In January Nik and Jimmy departed the band. No hard feelings, they just have other stuff going on. So we are in rebuilding mode at the moment. Just in the last month we got our friend Dylan to take over bass duties which has been awesome and will allow us to function basically. Buuuut, all of our songs are written for 2 guitar players, so we are trying to figure out how to proceed as a 4 piece. Just last night we wrote the skeleton for our first new song in about a year or so. All I can say is that it's different....partially out of necessity, partially out of choice.
In terms of bucket list stuff, we've really surpassed all my expectations of what was possible. We've talked about trying to get out West at some point. Obviously Trial, Strain, Unbroken are huge influences for us so that'd be cool just to get to that part of the country. And probably cliche, but Europe. "Stalactite" is the first time we've ever had a European label, so it would probably be possible, and obviously incredible to play a handful of shows over there at some point.
Like I said, for now the only objective is just to figure out how to re-imagine the band so we can keep soldiering on.
NJ: Lastly, I have to ask, you’re a father, a husband, still very involved with the Detroit hardcore scene, and you’re also a teacher. I wanted to know if you’ve met any kids or faculty who have had the same musical interests as you? Have you pointed any kids in the right direction, or have any randomly been at your shows?
ES: Not too much honestly. In like my second or third year at Novi one time one of my students came to a show I had booked and I was running door....the look on her face was definitely surprised when she saw me, haha. But it's funny, where I teach now is a pretty upwardly mobile suburb, I often jokingly refer to it as "Pleasantville", so the sort of fire in the belly rebellion of punk and hardcore doesn't appeal to most of my kids. Sometimes I get a student talking about djenty-metal stuff, or maybe a kid really likes Fall Out Boy, so I may make a Racetraitor or Sect reference or whatever, but not much tends to usually stick. I was talking to a trans student a few weeks ago to see if they knew about Against Me!, Hirs, Get Better Records, and while they were definitely interested, they definitely were not familiar. So yeah, not too much.
NJ: Any last parting words for readers? Words of wisdom or what not?
ES: Well, I realize I sounded mad grumpy through some of this, so here are some awesome bands I fully endorse that I think people should check out if they're not familiar: Extricate, Faim, Bury Yourself, Minority Threat, Seizures, Lift, Niboowin, Riot Stares, Hundreds of Au, Out of Body, Annulment, No Man, Ether, Less Art, and Amenra; so much Amenra.
No comments:
Post a Comment