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. The incomparable Poli Van Dam 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! You announced you were leaving The Bombpops in 2021, what’s been going on for the last few years? What’s it been like working as a solo artist after spending nearly 15 years in a band splitting duties and sharing the workloads?
Since leaving The Bombpops I’ve played some amazing shows and tours as a hired gun, I was asked to join John Jughead Pearson’s new band Semi-Famous which was of course an incredible honor and continues to be a surreal experience (our first full length album drops later this month, pre-order it now!), and I’m also doing the solo thing. It can definitely be intimidating but it’s also incredibly freeing. Musically and creatively, I can just put myself out there 100% and execute my own vision, and of course I have a killer band and team backing me up.
You are gearing up for Camp Punksylvania in the coming months, what does the festival circuit mean to artists like yourselves?
Festivals are great because they’ve always been a great place to catch newer or local acts that you may not have been exposed to otherwise, while seeing the bigger and more established bands.
What do you have planned for us beyond Camp Punksylvania?
I’ll be playing the penultimate NOFX show in LA in October. I’m also working on recording some new tunes for y’all.
What have been some of the most memorable moments or experiences with
the band so far? What’s been the most unexpected? The weirdest?
Over the years I’ve seen some wild and crazy shit out there on the road, let me tell you. This latest project is still super new, but my band and I have been having a blast playing with some of our musical heroes, as well as old friends and cohorts, and making new friends along the way. Just really trying to soak it all up.
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?
An easy answer might be that in retrospect I wish I had broken away from the Bombpops and done my own thing sooner, but I value all the work I did with that band and consider it all a crucial part of the journey that got me where I am today. I do kind of regret not getting a milkshake with lunch today though. Always get the milkshake.
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?
Well diversity and pretention certainly aren’t mutually exclusive. I think there can be this obsession with authenticity that can become toxic and kind of misses the point entirely. Who cares what’s “cool” or “punk” or whatever. Do you, and you’ll be good. That’s real authenticity. To me, the most punk thing you can do is not be “punk” at all, if that makes sense.
What’s the state of the live scene from your point of view? We are living in a “just deal with COVID” world and everything about this timeline is some level of completely fucked. What impact, if any, do the current cultural and political landscapes have on your music?
I don’t really write political lyrics but existing in this late-stage capitalism nightmare can’t help but have an impact on pretty much everything we do, and how we see things and process things. Like, I think a lot of people in my generation lean into sarcasm or dark humor to cope with how fucked up the world can be and a sort of perceived hopelessness. So, a lot of my lyrics can end up with a certain degree of cynicism behind them. But I also am hopeful, as a mom seeing kids being more empathetic and realizing that even our fucked up society can’t stamp out the potential of the human spirit. So that gets in there too.
Many of the Camp Punx artists have not been afraid to get political. If you had told me a decade ago we’d be looking at a campaign trail made up of a pair of clueless octogenarians, Russian disinformation and a laptop of dickpics I’d have told you there’s no way things could get so bleak… but here we are and it turns out you’d have been underselling the shitshow happening inside the dumpster fire of American government. How is the already absurd presidential race and performative legislation playing into your writing, the live experience and your mental health?
Well, you said it. Dumpster fire is an understatement. Continuing from my last answer, I do fully comprehend that we are living in historically dark times, but as humans we abide. And I see music, and all art and entertainment really, as a necessary escape from the brutality of the “real world” we all have to live in and deal with. Even political art that strives to affect some sort of change is still, on some level, escapism.
If Punksylvania were a real camp, what activities are you leading?
I dunno, is there golf? Three-legged race?
Let’s pretend there’s some post show jam sessions… what song are you playing at the Campfire sing-a-long?
Well, that would be spoilers, wouldn’t it? Who knows, maybe that’s where I get political.
Camp Punksylvania is a smorgasbord of fantastic acts. Which bands are
you most excited to see?
That’s tough. I’ve seen and played with a bunch of these bands before, and it’ll be great to catch up with old friends in Less Than Jake and Bad Cop Bad Cop, and legendary acts like 7 Seconds never disappoint. But honestly, I’m most excited to catch some bands I’ve never seen before. Like I said, that’s where the magic of festivals really lies.
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/
