Grab your s’mores, your bug spray and pack your bags as Riot Squad Media is about to take over Northeast Pennsylvania with Camp Punksylvania! The 3-day festival with multiple stages and amazing national and local acts like The Suicide Machines, War On Women and A Wilhelm Scream, will take place from 1 September until 3 September, tickets are available here. DC’s The Mostly Dead joined TGEFM to discuss their upcoming appearances at Camp Punksylvania for the latest installment of our Camp-centric Roll Of The Dice interview series. Check it out below and I’ll see you at the campfire!
Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview! What can you tell us about The Mostly Dead, your sound and what you stand for? What can our readers expect from your live performances and what’s next for The Mostly Dead?
Zak: Dang! That’s a big question… We’re a post-hardcore band from Washington DC and we formed back in 2008… it’s hard to specifically pin down our sound to me, but we draw influence from bands like The Bronx, Every Time I Die, and Cave in, but also tons of classic rock like Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, an endless supply of punk, hardcore, grunge, and alternative stuff from the 70’s-90’s like Fugazi, Pixies, Killing Joke, and the Misfits, as well as some newer bands like Drug Church and Turnstile, just to name a handful of influences. We take all these, throw them into a meat grinder, and when we write and record, we find ourselves drawing from this music slurry and doing different things, which I find really entertaining and gratifying, as well as occasionally challenging.
Kurt: As for what’s next, it’s the usual: playing shows, writing songs, drinking coffee. We have an album that we’re working on that we’re really excited about, and in the short term we’re about to release a remixed and remastered version of one of our early EPs.
Zak: It’s wild to be this busy at this stage of playing in this band, and I love it.
What do we stand for?
I generally prefer my lyrics to do the talking, but we all lean into anticapitalism to some degree and are big proponents of human rights issues – bodily autonomy, personal liberty, the application of equal access to the pursuit of life, happiness, liberty, and justice for all, not just for the wealthy. I’m against laws and public statements that focus on self interest and selfishness, corporate welfare, or movements or laws that negatively impact the lives or rights of already marginalized people… I guess broadly, that’s what I write about, with some personal emotional stuff thrown in for good measure.
Kurt: I also think this band stands for just trying to be as creative as we can be. There are a lot of ways to respond to the world but one of the things I’ve always appreciated about being in this band is that we all seem to be on the same page about just wanting to keep creating music until we’re in the ground.
You are gearing up for Camp Punksylvania in the coming months, what does the festival circuit mean to individual artists like yourselves?
Zak: Well, we loved playing Camp Punks last year, and we were super lucky to be invited to play with so many big acts and wonderful folks. For a highly independent band like we are, festivals are a great opportunity to get seen and heard by people who would not have otherwise ever heard of us. And Laura, Terry, and the rest of the Riot Squad fam are just awesome people and a pleasure to spend time with. I really appreciate all of them… they make Camp a special time.
Eric: It’s an amazing opportunity to play for people who’ve never heard us, and to see and talk to a lot of really talented musicians, AND it gives me an excuse to upgrade my camping gear.
Any summer camp worth its salt knows there needs to be a lot of different activities to participate in. What activity would you be in charge of if Camp Punksylvania was an actual sleepaway camp?
Kurt: If we could be in charge of any event, we would most likely host a memorial 5k run dedicated to the memory of all the campers who were slaughtered by Jason Vorhees. It’s the right thing to do.
Camp Punksylvania is a smorgasbord of fantastic acts. Which bands are you most excited to see on each stage?
Eric: So many bands: the Suicide Machines, A Wilhelm Scream, Bad Cop Bad Cop, War on Women, Working Class Stiffs, Fat Heaven, Teen Mortgage, Doc Rotten and Coffee with Lions to name a few, but really I’m excited to check out ALL the bands.
Zak: Oh man yeah there’s a bunch, the bands Eric named, and Dissidente are definitely up at the top for me, as well as all of our friends in Working Class Stiffs, Teen Mortgage, Coffee With Lions. Doc Rotten and Condition Oakland too… there’s a ton of great acts playing.
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.
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/
