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.
Wisconsin-based emo-rockers Tiny Voices are preparing to drop their sophomore EP, Make Up Your Place next Friday, 20 April. After recently releasing the outstanding single, “Minnesota, Wild?” the band rolled the dice with TGEFM to chat up the new music, the future and how Diddy Kong (with the assist from Tom Delonge) chose the band’s moniker.
Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview! Congrats on the soon-to-be released Make Up Your Place. What should our readers know about the members of Tiny Voices, your history and your sound?
The history of Tiny Voices starts back in college, when we were all roommates at UW Oshkosh and we simply thought it would be funny to start a band. We all (except Bailey and Colton) were music majors at the time and just thought it would be a fun idea to cover some songs and play some shows together. The name Tiny Voices comes from a song by the band Box Car Racer, and was also the result of a Super Smash Bros Melee tournament. (More on that later.)
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?
As a band, the five albums that really contributed to our sound and our overall love for music were: The Greatest Generation by The Wonder Years, Happy Again by Stars Hollow, Charmer‘s self-titled album, Opportunities by Hot Mulligan, and Copacetic by Knuckle Puck. They are what really drove us to continue doing what we do, and actually start treating it more than just a funny idea.
After the release of Where The Time Went, Tiny Voices has been garnering a lot of (well-deserved) hype as one of the “next big things” in our scene. How is that high standard playing into the writing and/touring process? Does the high bar you’ve set for yourselves affect your creativity?
We didn’t expect all the love that we got after our first releases. The support was incredible and it has encouraged us to work harder to develop our sound and push ourselves to make every release better than the last. We’ve learned how to work better together, and enjoy the process of writing, while also enjoying the projects that we’re creating. Now that we know what we’re capable of, it’s become an easier process. The new bar that we’ve set for ourselves hasn’t really affected how we think about writing new music. It’s inspired us to try to be better, but in the end, we’re really just trying to write songs that we enjoy and we hope everyone else enjoys them too.
Nobody can deny the world has been changing drastically over the last few years. Where do you see the future of music, both for Tiny Voices and also for the scene at large transitioning in light of these events?
We think the future of our scene is very exciting. We’ve seen a huge wave of new bands like us come from all over and it’s cool to see how everyone supports each other and has their own way of creating something we all collectively enjoy. We think there’s a bright future for the DIY scene. As for Tiny Voices, the only thing we know is that we want to keep making music, keep playing shows with our friends, and keep growing.
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?
We of course have to shout out our friends in Bicycle Inn, Excuse Me, Who Are You?, Endswell, Barely Civil, Doubter, The Sinner and The Saint, Garden Home, Lunar Moth, Clementine, Diet Lite, Bug Moment, Aren’t We Amphibians, and all the other bands on Thumbs Up Records (shout out to the Riff Mafia). They’re our homies and they deserve all the love! Many of them have been with us since the very beginning (Diet Lite even played our first ever show!). We’ve had a great time with all of our friends, new and old, and they deserve all kinds of recognition.
What’s next for Tiny Voices?
After the release of Make Up Your Place we plan to hit the ground running, writing new songs for a full length LP, and hopefully hitting the road more than we ever have before. There are a lot of places we want to play and we’re hoping to check lots of them off our list.
Was there anything I missed that you’d like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?
The Super Smash Bros tournament that decided our name, came about when we weren’t entirely sure if we wanted to keep our name as Tiny Voices. We came up with a handful of different names and had NPCs duke it out until there was only one left. In the end, Tiny Voices won the tournament and we kept the name. Also a fun fact, Ben hasn’t gotten his hair cut since we recorded Where The Time Went in March of 2021.
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/
