The Early November Band • Page 38

Hey no offense but fuck everyone who's gotten to see this band

I don't mean that but know that I'm super jealous. I had no idea that tours were done with mostly different people. Are they people there average person would know like from other bands or something?

 

I believe it's some of the dudes from The Swellers that are playing with Ace. The OG members usually just do east coast dates. Sometimes a couple of them will make it out to west coast shows, but on the west coast, you'll pretty much never see Jeff, TEN's drummer. He has a solid job at NBC that keeps him from being able to tour for too long. So he mainly just does the east coast stuff. This is the first time I've seen TEN in the last few years where it's ONLY Ace. I'm used to there just being a different drummer. But Ace says that he'd rather do it this way than not at all, and you can't blame him for that. It's good that the band still plays on the albums and helps write and whatnot though.

 

I’ve seen them all in Instagram videos and stories documenting their recording over the past few months, so I def think it’s safe to assume they’re all official members still. All the videos they’ve posted have me especially excited bc it seems like it might be pretry different from both of the last two albums.

Well, fuck me 7 times then I guess lmao. I don’t think any of the touring members have been from any bands that are very well-known, no. But I also have been lucky enough that of the 7 times I’ve seen them, only once has been with a fill-in (for Jeff), not counting the show on the acoustic tour (which was just Ace, Bill, and Joe), so I don’t really keep up with who the fill-ins are.

 

So Bill isn’t even touring with them now? Dang.

 

No! Which was super surprising to me, actually. I feel like Bill doesn't have anything else to do than just sit at home sharpening knives and playing his guitar all day, hahaha. Just kidding. But seriously, where the eff is Bill???

 

I feel like this is maybe the first tour he’s not been a part of??? Idk.

 

yeah, i think so too. he was only there for the first few shows that the other OG guys were there for. There must be some sort of logistical reason why some of them didn't keep going with Ace that they know about that we don't. I was going to yell out "Hey! The band looks different!" lastnight for some sort of info, but I didn't want to it to seem like I was saying I didn't want to see other guys playing, so I kept quiet. haha.

 

Honestly, as long as the dudes are still involved in the writing- I'm content.

 

Same. The band sounded great. They even added keys and violin. It was such a fun show. All the bands were great! It was especially fun seeing and chatting with Matt Fazzi after the Movielife's set.

 

Anything Fazzi say that’s worth reporting? Hah

Also Fazzi is a blast on stage.

 

He was SO fun to watch! He even tripped over Vinny's foot at one point but did a cool somersault. Haha.

He said that Rare Futures isn't exactly active right now but they have plans to still record live tracks and put out videos and other content so it's not like they're completely inactive. He also said that he really liked his time with TBS and he felt like it was enough time with them. He said that he, Mark, and the bassist at the time (totally spacing on his name right now) showed some demos to the rest of the band and they just weren't having it. Some of those songs became Happy Body Slow Brain songs. "Emperor" was one of like 3 that he said. I thought that was cool. But yeah, he was genuine and so easy to chat with.

 

Oh nice! I'll have to check Empire out. I remember everyone hating New Again but I loved it and now I see it as the last great TBS record so it's their loss.

Fazzi always seemed like a cool dude. He's from my hometown area and I knew his old bands growing up in the bay area scene so that was rad to see him join TBS back in the day. I saw him on Bass for Envy on the Coast as well earlier this year so the dude is crushing it on Bass duties.

 

At the Denver show now. I’m pretty sure I saw Fazzi outside on the phone and Ace is just walking around while everything is being setup. I’m just about as star struck as I can be right now haha.

 

dude! talk to either of them! they're both SUPER approachable and fun to talk to.

 

Didn’t want to disturb Fazzi since he was on the phone. Ace was talking to a couple by the stage and I didn’t want to interrupt, but if he comes out again I’m gonna dive right in with an awkward hand shake haha.

 

Such a great show last night. Ace sounded fantastic. Getting to see "Everything's Too Cold..." live was like a dream come true. Didn't think I'd ever hear that one. The Movielife were great too. Fazzi is fun as hell to watch live, the guy has amazing energy on stage.

 

Seeing "Everything's Too Cold..." was the highight of TEN's set for me too! Incredible. And Fazzi's stage presence was my favorite part of the whole night. Dude's so much fun to watch. Did you get to shoot the shit with either of them, or give Ace that awkward handshake?!

 

No, sadly . I didn't see Ace come back out. And the only other time I saw Fazzi when he wasn't performing was when he was sound checking. Next time I'll have to be more assertive!

 

I got to give Ace a nice awkward handshake on the acoustic tour they did

 

Count me as jealous!

 

my sister's favorite thing is to make me awkwardly take a picture with this band. I am always stark white

 

I am so grateful for this band ok that’s it

 

So with the Brand New stuff, and all the thinkpieces on third wave emo it’s inspired, I have been thinking a lot about the lyrical content of bands I grew up listening to (aka bands in this scene) and imo TEN’s lyrical content overall has aged better than most of their peers.

TRTC does mainly focus on relationships/breakups but, as far as I can recall, never does so in a way that really reads to me as misogynistic or possessive. Then you have TMTMTP, and that album is so incredibly mature lyrically, thematically speaking, especially for a band in that scene. I relate more to those songs now than I ever have. It deals with like the anxieties of living in a capitalist society, cycles of abuse, and mental illness, among other things... I really appreciate it so much, especially with how it’s grown with me over time.

I’m not gonna go over-analyze the rest of their discog, bc honestly this is longer than I wanted it to be already, but aside from maybe their first EP, I really stand by that band as an exception to the toxic masculinity of the rest of that scene (speaking solely lyrically, again, Idk about the members personally and they are a band full of dudes still so... y’know it’s not all perfect). I don’t really want this to come off as a pat on the back sort of thing or anything, just something I’ve been thinking about.

 

The only lyric that sort of fits into that whole third wave of problematic lyrics is the
For all of this I’m better off without you.. however I still think they do come across wayyy better than most of those bands

 

Yeah, I tried to be sure to mention that first EP being a bit of an exception (even then Idk bc that’s like... a very legitimate feeling imo when it comes to toxic/bad relationships too, so it could honestly go either way for me). Considering the band was barely out of high school when that came out, I’d say it’s still much better than some of what their 20-something peers were writing then too.