From Emo Dreams to Main Stage: Basterds Talk Warped Tour and New Music

0:04 Hey, you're listening to The Adventure of Pumlin on W4CY. For you. This is the Pipe Man here on the Adventures of Pipe Man W4CY radio, and I'm here with.. Alexi and Max. Bastards. Oh, my God. At Warped Tour. Finally. Oh, my God. Finally. Like, how does it feel to be here at Warped Tour? It feels nostalgic. That's for sure. I mean, I remember going to Toronto Warped Tour in 2018, if I recall right.

0:47 And it's really, yeah, no, it's what, 2018, yeah. And it's really nostalgic because, you know, every band wants to play Warped Tour. Back in the day, every band wanted to play Warped Tour, but here we are. Here you are in Montreal. What a cool venue, too. Like, I have never been to this venue. I've been to a lot of venues. But, man, I also thought it was, like, the easiest festival I've ever gotten to. Because, like, I step out my hotel, walk across the street to the metro, get off the metro, and I was right at Credentials when I had to stop. I'm like, oh, my God. It is amazing here. Like, I love it. I wish every festival had it that easy.

1:30 I mean, there's a lot of festivals that are here in Parc Jean-Drapeau. Yeah, each weekend from like a month and a half, there's a festival. Oceaga, Lasso, El Sanic. Nice. And it's such a cool venue. It's like a really cool vibe, you know, here. Of course. It's Van's Warped Tour. Exactly. It's perfect. It looks now, as Van's Warped Tour, like a skate park, which is cool with me. Yeah. I got to say, too, like, your neck tattoo is probably the most badass neck tattoo I've ever seen. It's fresh. I got it finished, like, last Friday.

2:10 Wow. Yeah. But, like, the color. Like, usually it's not a lot of color in the neck tattoo. Usually it's just the gray, you know? Yeah. Shout out to Simon from Quartz Tattoo in St. Therese. That's the guy. If you want some colors, go see him. That's the guy. It is. Badass neck cut, too. Very nice artists there. Quartz is very.. They're very cool. Yeah, Quartz is a very nice shop in St. Therese, which is like a little north of Montreal. But all the artists there are very talented. They're very skillful. Yeah. You know what's funny, too, is when I got here, my helper here, Nicole, she showed me a sign that I've never seen at a festival ever. And it was...

2:53 A sign to be careful of the penguins. Yeah, there's a lot of signs with penguins on it that says slow down. I'm like, I've never seen that. That's the coolest shit ever. I'd like to do a festival here in the winter. Like, imagine walking through the festival and there's a penguin right there. There's a festival in winter. I think it's on the island. And it's like a.. What's it called? I don't know. I can't tell. It's like an electronic.. Music festival and it's like Igloo Fest. Yeah. Because there's an Igloo Fest in Quebec City and I think there is also here in Montreal. That's pretty cool too. It's right in the middle of winter like January or February.

3:35 Maybe there's penguins. Yeah. Maybe. There you go. So when was the first time ever for either one of you that you dreamed about playing Warped Tour? It was a life goal for sure. That's what's crazy about this. It was a life goal for many, many years, but when Warped Tour stopped doing festivals, everyone was sad. Now that they're coming back, playing the first edition of Montreal Vans Warped Tour, I mean, it's a dream come true. I love it. I think since the first emo bands I was watching playing at Vans Warped Tour, I was like, I want to do that. I want to be on that stage. I want to do, like, festivals.

4:16 I've been playing music for half of my life and maybe even more than that. And I think, like, the first year I was playing music, I was like, one day I want to play on Vans or Dora. And here we go today. We're here just hanging out. Like, it's so amazing. Like, it's very intense. And the weather is perfect. Yeah, the weather is really nice. Oh, my God. It's, like, so perfect for a festival. The sun's there. Everything's there. Oh my God. So what can we expect from today from you guys? A lot of sun, a lot of drinking. I won't specify what drink, but a lot of drinking. Yeah, totally.

4:57 A lot of heavy music, punk, a lot of noise. I like noise. Yeah, we do. You know, it's funny. I think most people don't get it, but the noise is like such great therapy. You know, Pete, we were talking about that the other day. It's like, When I need therapy, I blast the noisiest, loudest music I can. And then there's other people that are like, oh, my God, that would drive me nuts. It calms me down, you know? And I think people don't understand the dynamic of it, you know? I mean, I think every music is therapeutic in a way. No doubt. Yeah. For you, the artist, and for us, the listener. Because for you, it's an ability for you to get stuff out of you.

5:41 To communicate. In a healthy way. And for us, we can relate to it. And then even in the pits. we get it out in a healthy way. Like a lot of people have been saved in my life by me going to the pit. When you write music, especially for me, I write lyrics and the stuff I talk about is to make people feel like they're not alone, like they're in some kind of situation. That I could be too, that everybody lives. So it is therapeutic. Absolutely. So one story, good or bad, as an artist in your whole musical journey, what would you share? Well, this summer has been the most wonderful year for us.

6:23 We've been playing like very, very, how can I say it, like very important festivals. And for us, it's like the best year for us. It's like going full circle playing with bands that we grew up with. It's full circle going to festivals that we grew up with. We've been doing this for close to 10 years now and it's just wonderful how we now have the opportunity to do that and just live the fullest out of it. So I'll tell you what I do for prepping for interviews.

7:03 is I get up early in the morning and I listen to each band's music. Know them or don't know them, I don't care. That's my prep for an interview. And so I was listening to a song you guys dropped in June. Yeah, November. Okay, and then I was like, I don't even want to listen to anything else now. It's so good. I mean, that's a good thing. That's a good sign. Right, right? It's good. So how would you say your motivation to writing songs is now compared to when you first started writing songs? It is different for sure. When we started, you know, when you start a project or something, you're eager to do stuff. You're eager to write, to create.

7:44 But when you're a couple years in, it's different because you're kind of used to the project to. A point where... It's not excitement. It's more about discipline and being precise on stuff you want to do. Like either it is instrumentals or me writing lyrics. I want to talk about specific things compared to when I started. It just went all out. I spoke about, I talked about whatever I talked about. Yeah. See, and I think your life changes, things happen, the world change. And those are the things you're generally writing about. And I think it also, I kind of think it gets harder for an artist too, as time goes on. Cause in the beginning, like there's no rules and you just write whatever. And then it's like, Well, the rules sometimes come into play, but more importantly, you're trying to do better than you did before, because you want to grow as an artist. So I think it's kind of a different vibe when you're... A few years in, right?

8:44 You know, writing music. It is difficult because you are more aware of what's good and what's not good. Right. That's what makes it difficult. And you're in competition with yourself. Of course. Don't be in competition with any other band. Exactly. Don't be in competition with yourself. One of my friends told me a couple months back, A musician is playing as an artist until he becomes an artist. And I feel that our most recent project right now is us as an artist and not playing as an artist. So we're not trying to be artists.

9:24 We're just feeling ourselves and actually do what. We want to do. Inside of ourselves. Like, we feel what we're playing now, and we don't pretend to feel what we're playing. I don't know if... That makes all the sense in the world. I guess that's like our.. You're being yourself, opposed to trying to be what you want to be. Exactly. We assume who we are. With these new tracks that's coming, we assume who we are. It's, you know, a new sound, a new vision, but it is us. Yeah. And i i think too like even with warp tour it's like if you took bands from warp tour nine in the 90s like would that same music that was at that same time be as relevant for a band itself playing in Warped Tour now. And I think you almost, it's gotta be a lot different because you grow as an artist and all that time. Plus, when you're young, you're writing about different crap than when you get a little older, for sure. You know, it's kind of like, I always talk about Joe from the Vandals. He'll always joke when he interviews with me because he knows I won't ask the question and everybody else does. He goes, Pipe Man, don't ask me when the Vandals are going to write new music. Nobody wants to hear a 50-year-old writing lyrics about a punk rock song. Exactly.

10:56 You get mature. You mature with the music and you get older. You have different hardships during your time. And that's what it is. We're not writing at the same pace. the same parts that we used to live back when we were like 20, 23 years old. Now we're all close to 30 now. So we're still young. We're still like very young, but like. But there is a big difference from lower 20s to 30 for sure. Like that's like the biggest growth moment of people's lives. I think is that 20s, you know. I think the early 20s is what is, what's going to define somebody, their personalities and how they view life in the future.

11:40 Exactly. That makes sense, too. So how do you get out doing Warped Tour? What else is going on the rest of the year? For the rest of the year, we had a big summer and now we're playing Warped Tour, but we already plan to drop an album. Nice. Drop some new tunes by the end of the year, I would say. It's not announced yet, but that's what's up. That's what's coming. It'll be like a Boxers Day present. So, you know, we had in mind that playing all these big festivals, then releasing an album could be beneficial and a good thing to do because the hype is there.

12:26 The hype from the summer is there. So why not just give some new music? Yeah, absolutely. I love it. We also have like a little tour that we're going... in the East Canadians, all the Maritimes, with two very, very good bands, one from Toronto and one from Quebec also. It's going to be cool. We're going to be doing a couple of dates in New Brunswick, so it's going to be very nice. First time we're going to the East. Very, very excited about that, too. Nice. I love it. And I always have to say that As an American, man, Canadian musicians are the best freaking musicians. It must be the shitty weather usually. Because, I mean, it is amazing the musicianship that comes out of here. And, you know, so I'm glad that I got to meet you guys here at Warped Tour.

13:22 Thank you for having us here. It's really cool. It's been really cool. Thank you for being on the Adventures of Pipe Man. Hell yeah. Thank you so much, man. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to The Adventures of Pikeman on W4CY Radio.