Roll of the Dice: 10 questions with Calling Hours

Led by the legendary Popeye Vogelsang of Farside and rounded by members of Don’t Sleep and The Commercials its no surprise that Calling Hours and their debut album, Say Less is one of the most anticipated records left to be released this year. Ahead of the 10 November release on Revelation Records, bassist Garrett Rothman joined TGEFM for the latest Roll of the Dice interview. We chatted about the new record, working with super-producer Brian McTernan and what the band has left up its sleeve.

Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Congrats on the upcoming release of Say Less!  For the uninitiated, could you tell us a bit about who Calling Hours are, where else we might know you?

Calling Hours is a new band made up of some maybe familiar names and faces from the hardcore and punk world from over the years. Our singer is Popeye Vogelsang from the band Farside, and the rest of the band is made up of members of Don’t Sleep. We’re based out of Harrisburg, PA.

Let’s talk a little bit about how Calling Hours came into existence. What was going on at the time that helped kick start the process?

Popeye lived his whole life in Orange County, CA but picked up and relocated to Scranton, PA five or six years ago when he married his wife. Incidentally, a lot of the lyrical themes of the songs on the new Calling Hours record revolve around the feelings of displacement he had arising out of that move. Not a knock on Scranton, but it’s definitely a change of pace from Southern California!
At that time, the rest of us were active in Don’t Sleep, and our guitarists Tom [McGrath] and Tony [Bavaria] were playing a reunion show of their old band The Commercials in Harrisburg on New Year’s Day 2022. Popeye was also slated to do a solo performance as part of the show, and the promoter, Jeremy Weiss, asked if Tom, Tony, our drummer Jim [Bedorf], and I would be interested in being Popeye’s backing band for a few songs. Of course we were stoked to play with him because we’re Farside fans. The songs we played that New Year’s Day – Farside, 7 Seconds, The Clash, Lemonheads, Youth of Today – kinda became the blueprint for the Calling Hours sound. We had fun and got along amazingly, so we decided to write some music.
Don’t Sleep was lucky enough to work with Brian McTernan when he recorded some of the songs on our Turn the Tide album, and we reached out to him to see if he’d be down with working with us on pre-production and demoing some songs. Turns out he’s a HUGE Farside fan (he named one of his cats “Popeye”), so thankfully he was on board. We spent the next several months writing and demoing songs that would make up the bulk of our new record Say Less. We shared the demos with Jordan Cooper and Sam Siegler from Revelation Records, and they were interested in releasing a record. So fast forward about a year later and it’s coming out on November 10!

What was the ethos for the band? Was there a mission statement from the start? A sound aesthetic or design?

Our goal from the outset was to write songs that were a platform for Popeye’s incredible voice. We tried to write songs that would give him the space to work his lyrical and vocal magic – we tried to get out of his way and let the songs breathe for him.
Early on, Brian cautioned us not to fall into the trap of writing songs that sounded like Farside, and that was great advice. I think our sound has a certain familiarity – if you like ‘90s hardcore and post-hardcore, crunchy and melodic guitars, and Popeye’s voice, our sound will probably click with you – but at the same time we hope it sounds fresh and modern.

What is it about the chemistry of this band that separates this project from your previous ones?  What stood out most to you with this recording compared to your previous trips to the studio?

The chemistry question is really interesting. The “instrumental” musicians in the band have all been playing together in various bands (including, most recently Don’t Sleep, but also Very Americans, The Commercials and more), so we have a certain degree of comfort in the way we write and communicate with each other. We also know and trust each other enough that we can accept each other’s criticism and not take it personally. In other words, if a riff we write gets vetoed by the rest of the band, we know that decision is coming from a good place.
Since this is the first time we’ve worked with Popeye as a vocalist, we weren’t sure what the chemistry would be like, but writing songs with him has been pretty much seamless – he has cool vocal and lyrical ideas, is open to suggestions, and has consistently nailed it in the studio.
The biggest impact on the chemistry, actually, was working with Brian McTernan as producer. Our process with Brian was that the band would write the skeletons of the songs (verses, choruses, bridges, etc.) and then allow Brian to polish them, making them more interesting, catchier, and more cohesive. Sometimes that happened by re-writing an entire part, and sometimes it was just a matter of changing one chord. Brian is obviously a songwriting genius, and just has a true gift of being able to hear what songs lack or need, and then to write a part that solves that problem. Without Brian, this record wouldn’t have happened.

Between Popeye’s time in Farside and the rest of the band’s time in The Commercials (and now Don’t Sleep), members of Calling Hours have been part of super influential acts that mean so much to so many of us. Does the high bar you’ve set for yourselves in the past help, hinder or affect your creativity today, and to what extent?

Thank you for these kind words, but Popeye clearly has been the most “influential” member of Calling Hours. Farside had a huge impact on our little subgenre of music – I remember they were the band that EVERYONE liked – the hardcore kids, the youth crew kids, the post-hardcore kids – whoever – Farside had something for everyone but you couldn’t put a finger on their sound or easily define them. A lot of what made them special as a band was Popeye’s voice, and frankly his lyrics – very honest and vulnerable, for sure – and a lot of people connected with Popeye obviously.
That being said, as I mentioned above, it was important for us not to ape Farside’s sound or to try to be a new version of Farside. So I think we were pretty intentional about writing music that’s in the hardcore and post-hardcore family but has its own identity and just sounds like us. So I would say our past bands motivated us to expand our scope a little bit, sonically, and to carve out our own sound.

The music world has also changed a lot over the last few years.  What are some of the biggest industry changes you’ve come across in your time within the scene?

Oh man, that’s a great question. In some ways, we’re doing the same old stuff – recording songs in studios, releasing a vinyl version of our LP on a record label, going on tour (we just got back from a European tour with As Friends Rust where we played in Germany, England, Belgium and Holland), doing interviews with music publications – but in a myriad of ways, things have changed.
The obvious answer is the role social media plays in operating a band these days, which of course is a huge time-suck and for sure is alienating a lot of us, and in some ways robbing people of direct human contact and interaction. But also, I think bands can use it in a positive way to let people know what they’re up to and stay in touch with fans and friends. Personally, it’s been so great to be in contact with people I just met on tour in Europe, people that I might have just talked to for a short time after a show, but now we’re connected for good!

You’ve been at this all for a while, 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?

Damn, that’s another good question. I’m not speaking for the band on this, but one regret that I have dates back to the early-‘90s when I was playing in a band called Junction. For some reason Mark Ryan from Supertouch sort of took us under his wing and got us on a handful of bills with Supertouch, which was a huge deal to us. At some point Mark and I were talking and he said that he wanted to pitch our band to Jordan from Revelation, and my first reaction was “no way they’ll ever put out our music.” We were sort of a post-hardcore, mid-tempo band with a female singer who really sang. He said that Jordan was looking to kind of branch out with Rev and that he thought we might be a good fit.
I was probably just afraid of rejection or whatever because I told him that I appreciated his support but it’d probably just be a waste of time. Who knows? Jordan might’ve heard us and thought we sucked, but in the next few years of course Rev put out Sensefield and Texas is the Reason and a handful of other bands that we would’ve fit with, so clearly I should’ve listened to Mark Ryan!
The lesson I learned from that is don’t limit yourself, don’t be afraid of rejection, and don’t assume you know how other people will react to your music. Anyway, as fate would have it, about 30 years later I’m finally in a band that’s putting out a record on Rev!

One of our obligatory questions in these interviews also tends to be the one I have found most important on a personal level. Who are some bands on your radar that TGEFM readers may not know about, but you think they should?

I’ve been telling everyone about a band from Germany called Phantom Bay a lot lately.  They played in our town of Harrisburg, PA a couple of weeks ago and absolutely melted faces. There’s another cool band we played with a couple of times in Germany called Wasted Years that I really like. I’m really digging my friend Amanda Mackaye’s band Bedmaker – really interesting music and Amanda’s voice always delivers.

Once the world has its hands on this record, what’s next for the members of Calling Hours?

Having just caught our collective breath from our European tour, we’re starting to focus on booking more shows and have some stuff in the works for 2024. Come see us if you can! We’re going to start writing new material soon, and are looking forward to getting back into the studio with our pal Brian McTernan!

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Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.