(NOTE – this interview has now been translated into English. Apologies for yesterday’s post of the interview, which was presented in AVEM’s preferred method of communication: bird speak)
Canadian ramonescore punks/bird enthusiasts AVEM’s new LP Three Birds Stoned is due out next week. I had the opportunity to do an interview with Julian Warmland (bass and lead vocals) from the band. A roll of a dice determines how many questions we can ask, between 2 and 12. All of the questions for RotD interviews are submitted at once, and there is no chance for follow-up questions. We rolled an ELEVEN.
1) 11 questions is one shy of the most anyone can get. So we’re pretty lucky in that sense but, you know, can we talk about birds for that many questions? (laughter)
I think you could roll 4d20 and we’d still feel like we haven’t said enough. (laughter)
2) OK, seriously though: out of all of the potential themes you could have landed on, why birds? I’ll admit that ornithology + ramonescore is definitely something unique, but did you have any other potential concepts that you decided against when you went in this direction?
Hmmm, not really to be honest. It wasn’t even a conscious decision to go ramonescore + ornithology. We started just jamming out songs over some joints, put a couple songs together and thought “hmmm, what should we sing about? Birds are cool!” Morry had been reaaaally into birdwatching at the time, and I’ve been a bird nerd since a vagrant pair of Painted Buntings showed up at my feeder when I was 8 or 9. Their normal range is about 800 miles south of here, so that was pretty special. If only I had pictures to prove it, it’d be the last confirmed sighting in this area. I’m told that the last time one was spotted here was the mid 70s.. so that’s pretty special.
3) Would any of our readers recognize AVEM members from other bands?
Well that’s a bit of a loaded question. Out of the core 3 of us, Bryson played in a couple bands, the most well-known one was called Castor Troys. They played around Toronto and Hamilton for a long time! I used to play trombone and keyboard in The Johnstones, so if readers listened to ska back in the 2000s, they probably came across that band one way or another! The reason it’s a loaded question is because we are yet to find a permanent 2nd guitarist. We typically alternate between Brad Manners from School Damage and Valerie Knox from The Anti-Queens! Brad’s a killer dude that is a gnarly guitar player and loves making music and partying with us (and he puts up with the bird obsession). Valerie is a total badass guitarist and a fantastic hang. She’s also a SUPER MEGA BIRD NERD and totally schools us (in a good way) in the quirks, quarks, and identification of parrots. She’s also the only one out of all of us that currently has birds as pets.
4) Some of the songs on Three Birds Stoned are from the point-of-view of a bird itself, but there’s a few others that are more facts and opinions about birds (“Red Wing Black Bird”, “Blue Jay”) and couple from a human perspective. How does the song-writing process for these tracks come about? I’d imagine there’s a bit more research than most bands have to do, but did you just check out a lot of birdwatching books from the library and just dive in looking for inspiration?
Hahaha, so the story behind “Red Winged Blackbird” is funny. Bryson and I were sitting in his car by a marsh. We had gone for a stroll to see some birds, and were working on vocal harmonies for our upcoming demo session with Jimmy Vapid. Over a joint were got talking about how the direction of our lyrics has changed from stuff like “Blue Jay”, and how we’re getting a lot deeper with our lyrics and a lot more serious. Riffing off that, I said something like “yeah dude, it’s easy now. Like here’s a new serious song.. Red winged blackbirds are called red winged blackbirds cause they have red wings!” aaaaand we kept it!
“Blue Jay” was actually the first song we ever wrote, back when we were wondering what to sing about. Those two songs are obvious, although “Blue Jay” is a bit incorrect actually. Blue Jays aren’t actually blue; without getting into excruciating detail their feathers capture colours in the light spectrum and only reflect blue, meaning we see them as blue. If you grind up blue jay feathers, they’d be grey because that’s their actual colour. Suuuuper fucking cool to be honest.
Most of the time, we just sing about what we know already. Since we’re so active sharing bird facts on Instagram it’s gotten us researching a bunch, and when we see or hear of a cool bird we often hop online or grab our bird book and learn some more. It’s not even something we have to actively think about really; we’re genuinely interested in the subject matter and there’s honestly enough information out there to last a lifetime. We’ve also made a bunch of ornithologist friends through this musical journey, both professional and “amateur” so they help us out too. Point out when we’ve fucked up; send us cool shit they come across. The birding community is really cool and super supportive, it’s a really interesting movement without much infighting that I’ve seen. The biggest arguments are ID related hahaha “THATS A CONNETICUT WARBLER!” “NO IT’S NOT, IT’S A MOURNING WARBLER! THERE’S NO WHITE EYE RING!!
5) One of your pre-release singles, “Nigel”, tells the true story of a ganet who fell in love with a concrete decoy on Mana Island (off of New Zealand) and courted her up until his death. It’s a sad story, to be true, but will this song become the go-to theme to the concept of unrequited love?
Dude, it’s such a fantastic story. Not only is it hilarious this dummy fell in love with a concrete decoy, it’s so beautiful that he loved it so much that he built a nest around it, tried to feed it, protected it from anyone and anything, and stayed by its side relentlessly for sooooooooo long. His movement on the island must have been spotted by other gannets, along with the other decoys and the speakers blasting shorebird screams. He never got his eggs or reciprocation, but his efforts enabled the introduction to a protected island where they can repopulate their species and be safe and secure. It definitely was unrequited love, but it created so much more than some sad dude crying in his beer… (laughter)
6) Speaking of “Blue Jay”, falcons may be cool, but what about the genus Corvus? I mean, they snowboard and, collectively, will remember and harass the assholes in their lives. Did ravens and crows get no love because they are over-rated? (laughter)
Dude! I mean sure, crows snowboard and recognize people, but Peregrine Falcons reach over 300kmh (that’s 186mph) in their dives! AND, they don’t actually grab their prey, they punch them and stun them, then swoop back around and pick them up. That makes them the fastest animal on the planet! COOL! That being said though, it’s a lot easier to call them the coolest bird cause they fly real fast than sing something about crows being the coolest bird because they’re hyper intelligent and have their own communities and essentially eliminated the stigma of “bird brain”. Our song “Rat Race” is actually about crows! I was doing a lot of reading and research on the New Caledonian Crow at the time, and after getting over the initial WOW factor (dude, these birds understand water displacement and can solve 8 step puzzles. I thought about how these crows would be feeling if they were human. They’re just running the Rat Race, being experiments and pulling in the 9-5 to be given JUST enough to survive. Taken away from where they want to be/should be juuuust to survive. That being said it’s definitely cynical and I think research on birds like this is incredibly important, it just was so perfect of a comparison to us doing our dumb rat race just so capitalism can reward us juuuuust enough to come back for more.
7) Although there is a wide world of bird-related stories, facts, and trivia, one might expect AVEM to be hard-pressed to trap lightning in a bottle again. Have you been working in new material yet, and how does the band plan to avoid a sophomore slump with a potential subsequent release?
You know, we talk about this a lot. Not for very long, because there’s sooo many birds and even more unique experiences they live every day. But it does come up quite often, because you look at other “themed” bands like wrestling bands or ‘hold you at knife point and sing you love songs’ bands and wonder how long they’ll be able to keep the shtick going. We’ve definitely pigeonholed ourselves (eh eh!) into that, but to us the hardest part will be keeping the music itself fresh and engaging. Birds are so cool and relatable the lyrics often write themselves; coming up with a catchy melody is the hard part.
8) On your social media you have a penchant for posting trivia about birds world-wide, as well as commenting or replying in birdspeak. What’s your favorite piece of bird trivia you’ve released thus far?
My favourite is probably when we introduced our followers to the Shoebill. They look like 80s tv show muppets, they’re MASSIVE and by god they’re terrifying. They can eat baby crocodiles, and they clack their beak together and it sounds like a fucking machine gun. They’re absolutely terrifying looking, and suuuuper neat.
9) “Pre Suburban Paradise” is a catchy, yet bummer of song. Who came up with “yellow moose” and can we give them some type of reward? I laugh my ass off every time that line comes up.
Hahaha I was really proud of myself when I came up with Yellow Moose. I mean, if you’re as small as a songbird and you see this massive yellow excavator in the distance, what else would you think it is? A moose is probably the biggest thing you know of.
That song hits really close to home for me. I mean, it’s the same story everywhere. Developers buy up forests or meadows and put in a metric fuckton of houses, and name it something stupid that speaks to what the land used to be (or sometimes, not at all related to what it was!) 4 bedroom luxury bungalos in Broadleaf Meadows, starting in the low 700s!
There was a beautiful forest and grassland just outside of my hometown that I used to spend a lot of time in when I was younger. It was always so peaceful and serene, and now there’s 300+ houses there. Old growth forest just mowed over and decimated for more city folk to move out to a nice small town that can’t sustain an increased population. When I saw the carnage, all I could think about was all the native species that was displaced, and what the fuck they are supposed to do now that their home is gone. That led to the story behind “Pre Suburban Paradise”; I had to mess around with my story a bit and add some repeating parts to make it fit the music a bit more, but all in all it came out really well. I think the juxtaposition (that’s what it is, right?) of such a happy sounding song with such depressing lyrics is really powerful. Birds are so innocent, man. They’re like us, they just want to survive and live their lives. Apart from watching their back for native predators and making sure they have enough food, their lives are pretty happy. Developers and the desire for big, expensive homes have consequences nobody thinks about. I wanted to put a small voice to that.
10) Could you name off some bands that TGEFM readers worldwide may not have heard of, but should be listening to?
Oh fuck. This question is always so hard. The High Hats from Sweden, they’re old but fucking great. Bonus points if you can get your hands on their previous band, Cumshot Hookers. We’re big fans of The Hextalls, arguably one of the best bands ever. Christian Blunda – Funky Punks In Space is an unbelievable record. MEGA from Italy are also fannnntastic, it’s alway such a treat putting on their records. If you use Spotify, they’re MEGA (Punk Rock). Marked Men are always a good time, and if you like a bit more weird of song structures that still rock, Radioactivity absolutely kick ass. Vista Blue fucking rock, their songs are so catchy and great. On the topic of earworms, look up Neck on bandcamp. You will be very happy you did, good lord are these songs ever catchy. If you’re feeling aggressive and want to hear a fucking ripping take on d-beat hardcore, check out Bootlicker. Or if you’re wanting a really cool ripping concept record, Seth from France have a phenomenal record celebrating “the conflagration and demise of Notre Dame de Paris as the end of the Christian reign and the ultimate betrayal of God”. It’s called La Morsure du Christ. Oh, and everyone already knows about Conmen, right?
11) With the pending release of Three Birds Stoned, what is next on the docket for AVEM?
Well, we’ve got 3 release shows booked so far to bring Three Birds Stoned to the Canadian masses. We’re hoping to book a bunch more over the winter, and fuck I dunno man, maybe hit the studio in the spring? We’ve got 18 new songs in the early demo stages, some with words, some just shells. More music, way more shows, more birds. That’s the plan. And maybe a couple video shoots along the way.
Sept 10th – Bovine Sex Club, Toronto w/ GET DEAD
Sept 30th – The Atria, Oshawa w/ BA JOHNSTON
Oct 15 – Palasad, London w/ band TBA
Three Birds Stoned is out Friday, 26 Aug, via Moms Basement Records. Visit the AVEM Bandcamp site to hear more of their previous music, including their Jan 2022 Sing Every Day EP.
the white drew carey (aka – Jeff Sorley) is the founder and head editor of TGEFM. He’s lived (outside of) Chicago, Madison WI, (ugh) Penn State, Lyon FR, Oxford UK, central New Jersey, and now within earshot of SFO in the Bay Area. When not scouring the web for more great bands and labels to post about, he also spends time drawing (mostly) silly sci-fi and anime stuff under the name Asplenia Studios.
