Introduce yourself…
We’re Threat Level Burgundy, a Ska/Punk band from Middlesex County Massachusetts.
How did the band start?
In 2008 a few of us had been talking about starting up a band, some of us had been in bands before but they were no longer around. Chris our guitar player was the one to finally decide to start a band around august. He talked it over with Pete our drummer and Austin our trombone player, they were both in so then we needed the rest of the members. Chris called Matt, the two of them had been talking about starting a band for around a year, Matt was in. Then Pete asked our friend Kyle to play Tenor Sax, Andrew to play Trumpet and James to play trumpet. Then we asked our friend Bill to sing vocals. We wrote a couple songs and practiced for a few months. It’s around January 2009 when we ask our friend Al to play alto sax, he agrees but leaves shortly after to focus on work and raising his daughter. Al, Kyle, Matt, Andrew, James and Austin were all in a ska band before called Make It Hurt. A few months later we get Billy on 2nd guitar, but Andrew and Kyle leave. When Andrew left we had Clay, Austin’s brother, come in to play trumpet. Then tragically the night before our first show our singer Bill gets hit in a head on collision with another car and doesn’t survive. We were all crushed by this, we don’t play the show the next day. The night of his funeral we have our first show with our friends The Syzlaks. We dedicated our set to him and played for the first time in front of people, the crowd really seemed to like it. Our friend Sam filled in on bass, learning the songs 15 minutes before we went on and Chris sang the songs, as he wrote them for Bill. The next day we play our friend Connors grad party, Sam on bass again, and we have a really good time. Months go by and we get back to practicing, Kyle and Andrew rejoin the band, but James leaves to concentrate on work. At this point we get a solid line up of Chris Guitar/vocals, Matt Bass/Vocals, Pete Drums/Vocals, Austin Trombone, Clay and Andrew Trumpet, Kyle Sax and Billy Guitar, with our friend Sam filling in on guitar/bass/merch occasionally and our friend Brian doing merch almost regularly, they are basically part of the band. We played a show in December of 09 and have been writing and playing shows ever since.
How did you come up with the name?
Chris and Matt were sitting in study hall in 2007 and the principal had decided to start informing the school of the current threat levels the country was at, inaccurately a majority of the time. Matt, Chris and our friend Scott started making fun of the principal by changing the colors and Chris said Threat Level….BURGUNDY! Matt found it very funny and said it sounds like the name of a ska band, so when we were forming the band almost 2 years later the name came back up and we just kind of went with it.
Who would you say are your influences?
A majority of the song writing is done by Chris and Matt, musically Bomb The Music Industry!, Sublime, The Arrogant Sons of Bitches, We Are The Union, Big D & The Kids Table, Rancid, Early Green Day, Less Than Jake, Anti-Flag, and Whole Wheat Bread are high up on the latter of influences. Lyrically a lot of our songs are about random stuff, Zombies, Star Wars, Growing up, The unfair treatment of the Homeless, our friends, bad experiences, certain cartoon empires that mislead children, and facebook statuses.
What was the punk scene like in Massachusetts?
The Scene when we started out was basically Hardcore bands. In high school the bands in our town were all ska, punk and hardcore, all the ska and punk bands broke up so that left the hardcore bands. They started trashing the local Masonic, VFW’s so on, so shows weren’t allowed to be held there anymore, thus the hardcore bands broke up. Ska/punk hasn’t really been popular for over 10 years so it was hard at first to find places to play. Our first show after we had a permanent line up was after a poetry night in some odd venue/drug front in Revere. We played with some good bands from near our area, Fake Boys, ABC & the D’s and some others, but they all wanted to leave early so we got pushed to last and played at 2 a.m. From there we played with a lot of random punk bands, non of which drew crowds. No one seems to care about live music much these days, unless it’s from a national touring act. Local shows seem to avoided, even though they are cheaper and easier to get to. We finally started playing shows with bands we liked around march ’10. SeX-Wing Starfighter, Lando and us played a lot of shows together in a 3 month span, where people came and listened and cared about music, it was great. After the two of them stopped playing shows regularly we finally got some shows with other ska bands, mainly in CT. Crowds were larger and more willing to pay for merch in CT. But back in Mass it was hard to convince people to get off the couch, even for free shows. We knew a lot of bands that were having decent shows around Boston, but they were all starting to breakup so their scene died out. Currently the scene seems to be full of pop-core bands who have a bunch of songs that sound the same and don’t promote shows so no one comes. We felt the need to try to unite the scene a bit more so Chris started a facebook page called New England Ska. Currently it has over 1000 followers and he’s organized/co organized about 10 shows in the past year. We’ve put on shows for touring bands, let them stay at our places, given them contacts for shows, and so on. We try to make friends with people at all our shows, not just other bands but crowd members as well. We try to have fun at our shows, more than try to impress people with our music. The scene seems to be slowly getting better then when we first entered it.
Describe the song writing process...
Well usually Matt or Chris write up some lyrics about something, usually something they’ve been thinking about for a few minutes. Then they write a guitar part and bring it to the rest of the bands. Then either the horn players or Matt come up with a horn line. From there we piece together the songs chorus by chorus, verse by verse. Over time we’ve slowly been changing little things in our songs to make them better.
What have you released?
We’ve released a few things, nothing too serious. We recorded a 6 song demo in the fall of 09 on rockband mics called, “Let’s Do It Again. For The First Time.” Then in Spring ’10 we release a single Go Big or Go Homeless! Which we recorded at Fitchburg State for Chris’s final project for a class. This was by far our best recording, since we used real microphones. Then in October 2010 we played a show at the Sad Café in Plaistow NH, where they record your set for free. We started burning copies of this and titled it “Undead at the Sad Café.” Those are the copies we’ve physically made copies of for sale, $1 for “Let’s Do it Again +GBOGH” and $3 for “Undead at the Sad Café.” We’ve also put out some free recordings, some acoustic songs from a radio show we played at Fitchburg state when we promoted a show we were playing there with Big D & The Kids Table, called RADIO RADIO! Then we also digitally released our second show at the Sad Café called “This is Why You Shouldn’t Give A Horn Player a Mic” Which has a majority of the same songs from the first cd, as well as some new ones.
Most of that is available for free here, even some tracks off the paid cd’s.
http://www.purevolume.com/ThreatLevelBurgundy
But coming up in the next month or so we are releasing a Split with Llama Tsunami called “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat” with 4 songs each. We recorded this in Ben of Llama Tsunami’s basement where he has a studio.
Who are some of the bands you have done shows with?
Some of the more well known bands we’ve played with are Big D & The Kids Table and The Supervillians. We’ve also played shows with a bunch of other bands, A Billion Ernies, Caddywhompus, Atlas the Atom Smasher, Llama Tsunami, Steady Habbits, Short Handed Goal, Bad Larry, By The Throat, Yesterday’s Heroes, SeX-Wing Starfighter, Lando, Life on Hold, Knightsbridge Fiasco, No Such Noise, Survay Says!, The Fake Boys, Kill Lincoln, The B Foundation, 4 Point 0, Sunrise Drive, The Waffle Stompers, along with a ton of other great bands, there are too many to list.
Have you toured?
We’ve done small tours, nothing too big. We toured around New England for a week in January at the beginning this year. Then a few weeks ago we did a partial tour with Llama Tsunami, going around New England and down to Jersey and Pennsylvania. We hope to do a larger one at some point in the future.
Do you prefer small clubs or large venues?
We’ve really only played small clubs and at a slightly larger room for the Big D show, we would like to play a large venue at some point in the near future.
Is there a favorite band you like to do shows with?
SeX-Wing Starfighter and Lando were our best band friends for a while. SeX-Wing just had their last show a few weeks back and Lando hasn’t played a show in over a year. Currently we’re playing tons of shows with Llama Tsunami. Playing shows with Survay Says!, Short Handed Goal and Sonic Libido are usually the most fun, we’re playing Sonic Libido’s last show August 20th.
Is there a favorite place you like to do shows at?
The Rabbit Hole in Fitchburg is pretty cool, it’s a book store that has shows. It’s small but the atmosphere is great. The Middle East Upstairs is pretty good too.
What do you see is the future of Threat Level Burgundy?
Well we are releasing a split with Llama Tsunami in the near future. We’re hoping to send that out to a few labels to possible get it distributed a bit better. Labels like Asian Man Records, Fat Wreck Chords, Community Records or Monolith would be most favorable, but we’re always willing to work with a label that has good people and a good attitude.
How can people contact the band?
Internet, we’re all over it. Reverb Nation, Myspace, Facebook, purevolume, twitter, email, ska-summit, and some other places I’m sure.
We almost never check myspace though, since its become a sad desolate place.
The best way however is email or facebook.
Threatlevelb@yahoo.com
Facebook.com/threatlevelburgundy
Also checkout
http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-England-Ska/141301885903009
Threat Level Burgundy are a great group of people that put on excellent shows! They are very kind and very handsome... You should interview them as often as possible. You are a good interviewer!
ReplyDelete- Sonic Libido