Grab your s’mores, your bug spray, a shot of Malort and pack your bags as Riot Squad Media is returning to Northeast Pennsylvania to take over the West End Fairgrounds in Gilbert, PA with Camp Punksylvania! The 3-day festival with multiple stages and amazing national and local acts like 7 Seconds, The Bronx, Less Than Jake, will take place from 5 July until 7 July tickets are available here. A Day Without Love have joined TGEFM to discuss this year’s festival for the latest installment of our Camp-centric interview series: Happy Campers. Check it out below and I’ll see you at the campfire!
Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview! What should our readers know about A Day Without Love; your mission, your sound?
My mission for A Day Without Love is to build a community of people who work to change their lives and their communities to be a bettter place. With my sound I always strive to challenge myself to tell my own experience strength and hope with my relationships to the world around me to be a better palace.
You are gearing up for Camp Punksylvania in the coming months, what does the festival circuit mean to artists like yourselves?
Playing festival circuits is a huge opportunity and privilege, being able to do this year to year and play bigger festivals year to year is a sign of growth and I am pretty excited to be part of Camp Punksylvania.
What does A Day Without Love have planned for us beyond Camp Punksylvania?
We will be playing songs from A Stranger That You Met Before my vinyl debut and some new ones 🙂 ,
What have been some of the most memorable moments or experiences with the band so far? What’s been the most unexpected? The weirdest?
I mean as of lately we played a festival where our drummer, Justin Arena played with bamboo sticks from the great outdoors and played blindfolded or there have also been times we have played and the audience has done things like moshed with “helicopter” arms. In the end of the day whenever we play a gig it’s a good time and a good vibe.
Regarding live shows, what are you most excited to bring to the Camp Punk audience? What do you want the campers to say about your set when they write home from camp this year?
I want people to be entertained and feel like they had a good time and also to play on a stage with bands we never thought we would cross paths with so in general we are excited.
We’ve all got a few, what is your biggest regret? A gig you turned down, advice you didn’t take, what one thing do you wish you handled differently as a musician?
I almost played with the Violent Femmes once, but then the festival was cancelled due to poor organization, otherwise I don’t have too many regrets
The punk and ska scenes have almost always been at the forefront of inclusion and diversity within the music scenes. The flipside of course is that the gatekeeping in the scene is also very prevalent? Why
do you think the genre brings in such a welcoming community and is so happy to let everyone in and also seems to shut the doors so quickly behind themselves?
I mean ska and punk are both black founded music genres, despite the colonial and whitewashing of both genres I think there are many people who still respect its roots and therefore dont have a gatekeeping mindset around the music community in my opinion.
Your Bandcamp bio is “Telling the truth through pain and story telling.” As someone without musical talent, the idea of using such a public forum as recorded and live performances to help heal and recover has always mesmerized me. Is there a trick you’ve found to ease the live performance struggle of reliving the pain you felt when writing the tracks?
A lot of therapy, a whole lot of therapy, and exercise.
I grew up and remain in northern NJ. I’m not sure if its nature or nurture but most of us are pretty biased against Philly and Massachusetts. Here’s your chance to defend the locales you call home. How has your time in both areas bled into your writing?
I can’t say I have spent enough time in Mass to answer that, but as a Philadelphian I can say that Philadelphia has been the canvas to allow me to paint from the trauma, to the drama, to the triumph, living in Mass is like living in Philadelphia on easy mode , which also makes me say maybe I need to write about that.
If Punksylvania were a real camp, what activities are you leading?
I think I would teach a martial arts class in self defense, a class on DEI , and a class on organizational dynamics in the woods.
Let’s pretend there’s some post show jam sessions… what song are you playing at the Campfire sing-a-long?
So trivial fact, I don’t like doing covers, so I probably would just teach everyone how to play my song “Show Friends” and we could do it camp fire style.
Camp Punksylvania is a smorgasbord of fantastic acts. Which bands are you most excited to see?
Black Guy Fawkes, Escape from the Zoo, Catbite, Sweet Anne Marie are a few favs I look forward to seeing it.
Was there anything I missed that you’d like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?
We feel like the new kids on the block and we are happy to be here.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/
