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. Amora frontman Billy Zee has 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 Amora; your mission, your sound?
Anytime! We are a band from outside of Philadelphia. We all love music and are a collective group of best friends. Our influences range all over the place from emo, to post hardcore, to even hip hop. In 2022 we put out an EP called Cutting Teeth on Heading East Records (owned by Fred Mascherino) and just recently released a single called “Sacraments” on the same label. More can be found here
What album or band or significant singles made you go “Yeah, this is what I want to do” Not just an influence but who or what was the catalyst?
Not the most punk rock thing in the world, but when I was 13 my friend’s took me to see We Came As Romans at Hangar 84 in Vineland, NJ. I never went to a concert minus seeing Bayside and Hawthorne Heights play Zumiez Couch Tour at the Montgomeryville Mall in North Wales, PA in 2009 and that was in a parking lot so it was very “open”. I always thought concerts were only in huge arenas or whatever you see on TV and it was this huge deal. That being said, I was VERY surprised when we pulled up to this 200 cap dive bar with no barricade. I did my first stage dives, moshed, all the stuff you do when you are that age and it was so fun. What sealed the deal was meeting a lot of the band members that day. When you are young and discover celebrity culture, you are raised to think that these people are unattainable or of a high status. Meanwhile, all these bands hung out with their fans between sets and put themselves on the same level as everyone else and I always thought that was the coolest thing you could ever do. The cherry on top is that I mistakenly took someone as a band member, but found out they were the owner of the venue. Took me backstage (which really was a loading ramp) and I watched the whole operation of breaking down the show. Just from all my experiences that day I knew that this environment was where I wanted to be forever and this is what I wanted to do.
On the flipside to that one… Who are some non-Camp bands on your radar that TGEFM readers may not know about, but you think they should?
Too many to name but all our Heading East Records family. Our whole roster are all bands I am really excited about and believe you should check out.
You are gearing up for Camp Punksylvania in the coming months, what does the festival circuit mean to artists like yourselves?
We are super excited. We do not get to do festivals like this often and it has always been a level where we wanted to get to. We grew up listening to a lot of the bands across the 3 days and it has been surreal to be asked to play this. I still remember my neighbor showing me Big D and illegally downloading their songs to my 512mb mp3 player from his computer and now we are on the same day as them and 12 year old me is tripping (laughs).
What does Amora have planned for us beyond Camp Punksylvania?
We have Brewstock in Gastonia, NC with Psychostick later this month, currently trying to lock in more shows and release new music for the rest of the year.
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?
That’s the million dollar question right there. Compared to the rest of the line up, we have punk roots but we do stray and are more of a post-hardcore band. That being said, I hope that the energy and chemistry we bring to the stage gives something to remember. I cannot really name what that “something” should be as it all depends on the perspective of those watching us.
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?
We got offered a show with Taken and Gatherers at The Barbary in Philly back in 2019? I grew up listening to both of those bands and the show was one of the first Taken shows in forever. If you know me too, The Barbary is forever one of my favorite venues. The show was the same first date of a tour we had booked with Heavensake and we played Yonkers, NY that night. Everyone involved said “Why didn’t you do it?” and really it came down to how much work our friend Arthur Wernham (of the band For Lack of a Term) put into having us in NY that night and knowing we wanted to expand in other markets. The show in Yonkers was so good and helped make NY a hot spot for us to come back to this day and this gave another Philly local an opportunity to have a big show.
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 work in a small theater venue that gets a lot of legacy and legendary acts that were huge names at one point in their careers, like arena huge. A big percentage of our patrons and staff tell me constantly “What is up with the music today?” and I think that is really the universal question. When you find something new and exciting it is so special to you and it is this whole underground world. You find home in it, but then years come by and there are new kids and they bring a new ethos and listen to the recent records of a band and not the first records that you discovered that same band on. I remember seeing Knocked Loose play to 20 kids at Voltage Lounge years ago and they just sold out Franklin Music Hall next door to 2500+ kids. A friend of mine will also say how he saw Every Time I Die play a tiny dive bar to 20 kids way back in the day. There are so many new ways to access our music which I think is amazing, but some people are not stoked on that.
The connective tissue of both examples I mentioned can be summed up to one word: change. Things change. Those who were in this scene way back in the day had a whole different ethos in their scene and they get mad that the kids of today didn’t have to go through that. There are so many different styles and genre changes as we upgraded from myspace demos to actual productions and now with social media how it is, it is so easy to find this genre and dive in head first without having to go through the motions in order to obtain it.
I can run circles on this answer forever but really it all comes to change and accessibility. It is now easier to walk into a show and have a good time compared to hiding from crew guys with 8 balls in socks way back in the day. Do not listen to gatekeepers, do you and do you proud.
Working with Fred Maserchino must have been a pretty surreal experience based on all the amazing work he’s put out over his career. What advice has he shared, what impact has Fred had on your sound?
It really is. Even with how our relationship has developed, I still have moments where that young kid in me that stole my sister’s Where You Want to Be CD comes out and has that “wow this is my reality” moment.
It is hard to really narrow down a piece of advice because we are always talking and always planning. Fred is an encyclopedia of knowledge and experience and our band is always learning whenever we work or talk together.
Fred obviously has his experience and has helped elevate our sound by allowing our foot to be on the gas; however, he is not afraid to show us where to go. Whether it is changing something in a riff to work better, changing lyrics to fit and have more impact, Fred sees the bigger picture and always wants to go after it.
If Punksylvania were a real camp, what activities are each of you leading?
Tristan (Guitar/Vocals) would probably taking lead on teaching bartending, Nick would be giving everyone a nickname and an animal that they look like (he calls me zee dog the tree frog all the time, whatever that means), Bryan Rodriguez (Drums) would be teaching fighting classes, Chris (Guitar/Vocals) would teach Marijuana Consumption and how to riff.
Camp Punksylvania is a smorgasbord of fantastic acts. Which bands are you most excited to see?
For me personally, I really wanna see Big D and The Kids Table. When I was 14 I was at my neighbor’s house who introduced me to a lot of the music that pulled me into this scene. Big D was one of those bands that stuck and it is crazy to think half my life later we would be playing a show with them on their date. So that is a little bit of a full circle moment for me. The Bronx is awesome too, Chris (Swanson, Guitar/Vocals) and I saw them with Thrice and they were just a blast. SOJI is also another one. Chris and I booked them on a show once and they kicked ass. Our sets are back to back on Saturday so that will be really cool to see them again.
Was there anything I missed that you’d like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?
Check out our new song “Sacraments”, we have plenty of new music we will be dropping throughout the year. Thank you for your time and see you 5:30 on the Riot Stage!
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/
