Teen Agers interview

Salad Days
On February 22, 2014

In early January Salad Days Mag had the pleasure of sitting down with Kyle from the Florida punk rock band Teen Agers during their Brooklyn stop of their East Coast tour.

Here is what he had to say about the band made of “80’s/90’s kids stuck in the hell of today”.

SD: How did the band get started and where does the name Teen Agers come from? I know some of you are/were part of How Dare You, Protagonist, Go Rydell and Direct Effect…
TA: So somehow we all ended up in Orlando over the last 5-10 years and we all became great friends while “serving time” in our other respective bands. Jordan was in Direct Effect, Justin and Nick were in Go Rydell, Justin was also the singer for How Dare You at the time, and I was riding the bad luck train of Protagonist. We all hung out at the same bar every Friday night, we played the same shows, we watched football together, so why not, we finally decided we’d do something together in December of 2011 and shortly after became known as Teen Agers, which we are very obviously not, it just seemed like a good idea at the time, haha.

SD: You guys are from Orlando, FL. How did growing up in FL influence you as a band? Some people think that – in order to be successful in this music scene – you have to move to California (some have done that, with different results). What would you say to those guys?
TA: 3/4 of us grew up in Florida and the other cut his teeth on the mean streets of Philadelphia in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, so we grew up going to punk/hardcore shows in our respective scenes. I personally grew up in Coral Springs, so I saw New Found Glory explode in front of my face, I was barely 14, but I knew it was what I wanted to give a good hard shot, and the only thing that could get me there was hard work and perseverance. So here are today, we all have day jobs, some of us own businesses and some of us sell t-shirts to/for other bands, but point is we’re still at it. The whole moving to California thing to me was always for bands that already “made it.” Moving to New York or Boston or Richmond to me always seemed more practical. It’s really hard for you to do 2 or 3-day weekend hikes from Florida without hitting gator infested, swamp towns that no one goes to. If we lived in New York however, you can play Boston on Friday, NYC on Saturday, and Philly on Sunday, three major markets vs. mosquito high and gator bait dance hall in Florida. To close out the thought on Cali, it’s expensive, so if you have a rich mom or plan on starting a kick-start to pay your rent, go for it, for the rest of us, no thanks. Black Flag and Descendents suffered enough for us all.

SD: You signed up with Anchorless Records, recording with Less Than Jake’s Roger Lima and having the album mixed by Stephen Egerton of Descents and All. How did all this come together?
TA: Neil from Anchorless and I go way back and more recently he put out Justin’s old band How Dare You, so after a long conversation at the fest in 2012, he quickly wanted to be a part of the project and we joyfully obliged him. As far as the whole Roger/Stephen team up we had going on for ‘I Hate It’ like everything else with this band, we used past relationships to make this band move a little faster. I recorded with Stephen back in 2010 with my other band Protagonist, so – instead of driving all the way out to Oklahoma again (and getting our trailer stolen) – we decided we’d track with Roger Lima (Less Than Jake/Rehasher) and then send it up to Stephen to mix. Roger is also a great friend of mine, I used to work for Less Than Jake, so working with Roger was something we wanted to do from the very beginning and couldn’t have been happier with the outcome.

SD: What bands did you get inspired by while writing your ‘I Hate It’ record?
TA: Constant inspiration for us comes from the past, we’re 80’s/90’s kids stuck in the hell of today, but the biggest influences on music are Bruce Springsteen, The Clash, Foo Fighters, Dag Nasty, Fugazi, etc. We all wanted to write a natural sounding organic record and the first 5 songs came to us in the first 5 practices, it was literally a song a practice the very first times we played with each other, it was insane.

SD: How did you come up with such an odd plot for the ‘Here We Go Again’ video?
TA: The plot for the ‘Here We Go Again’ video was 17 different ideas rolled into one, haha. First it was going to be some crazy alien-themed conspiracy, then moved on to murder, and finally it just became some inception kinda sci-fi thriller where we all get killed and then watch ourselves be killed by the girl we just found dead, crazy. We owe it all to Chris Tharp, our great friend that help sort through the ideas and result in one chaotic, but thrilling 3:15 seconds of film.

SD: Where is the record available?
TA: You can get the record on iTunes, Amazon, Anchorlessrecords.com, local record store, or www.districtlines.com/Teen-Agers

SD: Any plans for a European tour anytime soon? If so, where and what bands will you be touring with?
TA: We’ve been working with Glenn from Mighty Vision Entertainment on getting over there, so hopefully soon, but nothing for sure yet! We’re just waiting for Less Than Jake to finally decide to open for us, haha.

SD: Do you have any last words for the readers of Salad Days Mag?
TA: “Live you heart and never follow.” – drops mic