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. Kyle Fischer, drummer of Canada’s The Dirty Nil 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 are gearing up for Camp Punksylvania in the coming months, what does the festival circuit mean to artists like yourselves?
It can be a maddening time of year where you do a ton of hopping around coast to coast for festivals but it’s all worth it when you get to play with great bands. I’m always thankful that it can give you an opportunity to see bands you haven’t seen before and make new friends.
What does The Dirty Nil have planned for us beyond Camp Punksylvania?
We have a few West Coast shows with the Gaslight Anthem and Joyce Manor July 26th – August 11th and then you can catch us in Toronto for Frank Turner‘s Lost Evenings September 21st. Maybe some new music. Anything is possible.
What have been some of the most memorable moments or experiences with the band so far? What’s been the most unexpected? The weirdest?
There are always too many to nail down but one of the biggest unexpected moments was opening for The Who in 2017. It happened to be Luke’s birthday and Pete Townsend is one of his favourite guitar players. He managed to walk by Pete as he was stepping out of his car backstage and wrangled Roger Daltrey in for a picture as well. Couldn’t have been a bigger moment for us at that time. We also played to about 60,000 people. It was insane.
A weird one was doing a last minute show in Omaha with our pals the So So Glos who we didn’t realize were friends with Connor Oberst. Next thing you know we’re all staying at his house. He wasn’t home but his wife at the time had us all over. It felt like we were trespassing but she was so welcoming. I remember sleeping on a thick, blue shag carpet. Music can really take you places.
Regarding live sets, 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?
A lot of volume. A lot of high kicks. A good dose of back bends too.
It’ll have people thinking “damn…those guys can eat a lot of cheeseburgers.”
Your fan base doesnt conform to singular genres, and neither does your sound with hints of power-pop or metal and punk all over your records. with a catalogue as diverse as yours, how do you figure out a set list that’s going to appeal to such a diverse set of fans?
We always tinker with stuff in the setlist. We try to nail down a solid beginning and end to a set. Then we shuffle things up in the middle. We can cover a lot of material since our songs are short but some things do get lost in the mix. We just try and play the songs we want to play and it usually works out. We even pepper in some new ones here and there if we have the material.
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 think it suffers from the same difficult feelings as discovering a new band that no one knows. You see them in a small club or something. It’s amazing and accessible and you think it’s just for you and this small group who knows. Once they get bigger and the word gets out it becomes something different. I think change and growth are great but it can be scary sometimes and even produce lackluster results. That’s okay though because evolution is important. Some people just want to keep things in a place where they can control it. You have to let it go though because it’s going to be what it’s going to be.
What advice do you have for the up-and-coming acts at Camp Punksylvania?
Play lots of shows and fuck up a lot.
You’re from Hamilton, Ontario. It’s such an interesting, diverse and generally under-appreciated place that has bred so much amazing music (plus Martin Short and Canada’s Greatest Athlete, “Iron” Mike Sharpe). Why do you think the area churns out so many brilliant musicians, songwriters and artists? How does the area feed into the music you are writing, if at all?
Don’t forget Eugene Levy too! Hamilton was a relatively cheap place to live for a while, especially compared to Toronto so I think it afforded artists a place to put a roof over their heads. Hamilton is also known for a tough working class mentality and underdog spirit which I think comes through in a lot of music in the area or at least in an artist’s work ethic. Who knows? It could be that we are the waterfall capital of the world. There’s something in the water, as they say. I love this city and I am thankful that I grew up here. It’s going through a bit of a transition right now but I know that the heart of the city will remain unchanged. Evenings & Weekends by Andrew Baulcomb is a good book if you want to get a taste of what the music scene was like here in the early 2000s to the 2010s.
I can’t say for certain but I think the area colours some of the music that is written. The strongest examples are the songs “Bye, Bye Big Bear “(which is about a house we all shared and the convenience store across the street) and “Blowing Up Things in the Woods” (which is about mine and Luke’s teenage years running around with homemade fireworks trying to literally blow things up).
If Punksylvania were a real camp, what activities are each of you leading?
I think Luke would be in charge of fitness and guitar lessons.
Sam would run the drama/acting camp. He has an acting background.
I would do the cooking.
Let’s pretend there’s some post show jam sessions… What song are you performing around the campfire this year?
“Luke’s Guitar” by Stompin’ Tom Connors and “Please Don’t Bury Me” by John Prine.
Camp Punksylvania is a smorgasbord of fantastic acts. Which bands are you most excited to see?
Always great to get to see The Bronx. Catbite will be fun too!
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/
