Evergreen Terrace guitarist Joshua James admits that “fun” was a huge motivation behind forming his band back in 1999. Amazingly enough, the band’s lighthearted and experimental attitude inadvertently helped give birth to what is now an extremely prolific hardcore scene.
Evergreen Terrace’s hometown of Jacksonville, Fla., had been the playground for primarily traditional punk bands, so James and his bandmates decided early on to dabble in the world of hardcore for a change of pace. Although James admitted that his band “sucked” in the early days, the decision to start writing hardcore songs attracted attention to his band and helped shape an the new sound of Jacksonville.
Now with 7 albums under their belt and an assortment of pop culture references in their arsenal ("
No Donnie These Men Are Nihilists" pays tribute to The Big Lebowski while “I Say You He Dead” is taken from Family Guy), Evergreen Terrace is back with its new full-length album
Wolfbiker.
The record once again showcases the band’s ability to fuse melody and screaming mayhem, and guitarist Joshua James said Wolfbiker’s message of independent thinking is just as integral as the music.
UG: You were one of the first hardcore bands on the Jacksonville, Fla., scene. How did audiences embrace that sound in the early days?
Joshua: We formed in ’99, and at the time there really weren’t any hardcore bands around in Jacksonville. The scene was predominantly various styles of punk rock. All of us were in a lot of different local punk rock bands, and one day we all kind of found ourselves not really being in other bands. It was like, “Oh, let’s start a band. Let’s do something a little bit different than everything that’s around.” Everybody in the band listened to hardcore and we were like, “Well, let’s start a hardcore band. It will be fun, it will be refreshing, and it will definitely be a challenge to start trying to write hardcore stuff.”
I was in a band that sounded like NOFX. A couple of the other guys were in real fast, old school punk bands with like 4-foot tall Mohawks. So it definitely was a challenge for us, as far as trying to write a different kind of style of music. We were big fans of like boysetsfire, South Gate, Earth Crisis, but at the same time I don’t think it ever really occurred to us to start a hardcore band. It was going to be something fun.
There was this church that had a youth pastor – he was like 22 or whatever – and he listened to a lot of hardcore. I guess he heard about us somehow and he was like, “Hey, I have this huge church. You guys can put on shows there if you want.” We’re like, “Okay!” So I think for probably the first good year, year-and-a-half of Evergreen Terrace shows and hardcore shows in Jacksonville, it was at this little hole-in-the-wall church. I don’t even know if the actual people that ran the church knew that it was going on!
After those first performances did you notice that more hardcore bands were coming out of the woodwork?
Our friends and kids around town started going, “Wow, this is kind of different.” Then other local hardcore bands started popping up. I think it just became one of those things. It’s kind of weird because now I want to start a punk band! In Jacksonville, now there are no punk bands anymore. It’s like hardcore or metalcore or some type of core! It’s done a complete 180 in the last 8 years. At the same time, kids are really supportive there of all styles of music.
We didn’t expect it to happen. It wasn’t really a joke, but when we started there was no intention of ever doing anything. We’re doing more with this band than we ever did with any of our previous bands.
How much has the band’s songwriting process changed over the years?
I think that back then honestly we didn’t have any clue! It was just one of those things where we were like, “Yeah, this sounds heavy!” Now looking back on it, it was the weakest-sounding thing that this band could have possibly created. I think that honestly it’s just one of those things that as the years have passed by, everybody has matured as songwriters. We’ve matured together as a band or as a group of songwriters. So I think we somehow developed our own sound, which works for us because it seems the songs we put out now are just songs that automatically flow out at us.
When you listen to the new record, you can definitely still hear a lot of the melodic punk rock influences that we’ve always had. I think you can hear it more now than ever. A lot of that has to do with the fact that this is the first record that Kyle, our drummer, has played on. He has a lot more similar influences as we did, versus our old drummer had with us. I think this new record is the definition of what Evergreen Terrace sounds like and what we’ve always been trying to sound like.
When you listen to our original demo, it’s so bad! The vocals are bad, the melodies are bad, the guitar tones are horrible. I think I played a Stratocaster when we first started playing.
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| "The main concept of the record is being pissed about the current way the world is going." |
What are you playing now?
I have an endorsement with ESP. I play ESP and Craig (Chaney) plays Schecter.
At what point did you and Craig decide to switch over to ESP and Schecter?
I bought a Schecter guitar because I started learning about tones. I was like, “Man, it’s so strange how we try to write this bridge and it just doesn’t sound heavy.” It was finding out about 10 different types of pickups, amps, and effects. I think I got Schecter with EMGs right before we recorded our first record in 2001. I played that all the way up until, I think, 2004. It was when we finally got an endorsement with ESP. No, actually 2005 is when we finally got endorsed with ESP and with Schecter.
What aspects about the ESP suit your playing style?
I definitely like the body style of ESPs more than the other companies that are out right now. Like their Viper style, it’s an SG-looking guitar. I like how thin their necks are and how thin the bodies are. When I pick up one of Craig’s guitars, the Schecters, they play awesome. I like Schecters as well. I think the difference is that once you start playing a guitar, you really get used to the way that guitar feels. I think a lot of ESPs – or at least the ones that I have – they feel the same to me. It’s opposite with Craig. He’s used to Schecter. They have a fatter neck, almost like an acoustic guitar versus the ESP.
The album Wolfbiker has some incredible riff work on it. Do you and Craig both come up with the bulk of the songwriting ideas?
As far as the writing normally goes, usually myself or Craig or Kyle will come into practice with a riff or an idea. We kind of feed off of that. That song “High Tide Or No Tide,” I had completely written all the way through for the most part. Then with “Chaney Can’t Quite Riff,” Craig had a huge part of the song already written. Sometimes it’s a little bit easier when someone has a lot of the song written and they come to practice with it. I know if I come to practice with a full song written, 9 times out of 10 there will be like 4 or 5 riffs that we’ll definitely keep.
It’s kind of strange. I mean, I’m not real familiar with how a lot of other bands do their writing. If I have a riff, I’ll teach everybody my riff and we’ll get it down. Maybe we’ll change a couple chords or tweak it out just a little bit. Then we’ll just play it a few times and everyone will just talk about what they hear in their head after that part. We’ll just try to feed off of that idea and continue. I think that with this record, things just kind of poured out of us.
Probably about a year ago, we had 8 songs written. Then we did the pre-production. When we were on the Sounds Of The Underground Tour, we just worked a lot everyday. By the end of that tour, we realized that the songs just sucked. They definitely were not up to par with what thought we could come up with. So we scratched all those songs and we wrote the record in a span of about 4 months.
Talk a little bit about what the message behind the term “Wolfbiker.” Your website is somewhat elusive in completely revealing exactly what it means.
It’s kind of like the idea of a free-thinking person who doesn’t give a fuck. People are pressured by society or by the media, or my friends and family, who have lived a certain life and they believe in a certain thing and they listen to a certain style of music. I think a lot of people are unhappy with it because they are never really truly finding themselves. I think that they know that they’re capable of making their own minds up and they’ve fallen victim to pressure, I guess.
The main concept of the record or the motivation, I think a lot of it is being pissed about the current way the world is going. Everyone clearly has their own mind, but I think that only a certain group of people really fully live that way and really try to take hold of their personal lives and make their life the best that they can make it.
That’s very cool that you spread that message, particularly in the music world where there is pressure to like certain bands or styles.
Yeah, definitely.
How have the fans responded to the Wolfbiker message?
We’ve gotten a lot of emails from kids, MySpace messages and stuff. They’re kind of shocking. At the same time, we also kind of have fun with it. Like last night I was with one of the other bands on the tour and we were like, “Fuck it! Let’s just sleep in this parking lot. Who gives a shit?” So it’s like someone was like, “Yeah, fuck it. Wolfbiker.” But I was really actually surprised at the amount of feedback that we got from kids that are just like, “Man, I totally know exactly what you mean. I feel the exact same way. I’ve always felt this way and I always feel so pressured. It’s so awesome to hear someone actually saying that it’s okay to make your own mind up.” I thought that it was awesome.
I think that right now there are not too many bands that really are trying to say something with their record. The lyrics might individually mean something to them or to the listener, but I think as a whole I just don’t see that many bands right now really being outspoken about the current situation of their life or their thoughts on the world.
Were you inspired by bands that presented a message similar to what you’re trying to say today?
Yeah. I definitely think so. The first band that comes to my mind is Propaghandi. They are like one of my favorite bands. I think I would say they’re definitely the first band. When I was 13, I got How To Clean Everything. I re-read all the lyrics a couple months ago. I was sitting in my room and I was listening to them, so I decided to pull out the booklet and read the lyrics. To this day, those lyrics blow my mind. That record is really about freethinking. A lot of things that they were saying then, I didn’t understand at the time because I was only 13. I think that because of those lyrics, I really looked into what they were talking about and learned about a lot of things. That band was definitely one of the biggest influences on my life.
Other bands would be like Bad Religion, Minor Threat, Operation Ivy. Some bands really have some amazing things to say. I think that you can really get something out of a set of lyrics if you look into it. I really got a lot of things out of those bands. I think that those bands definitely influenced me on the way that I ended up living my life and the way that I think about certain things and what I’ve learned throughout the years.
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| "We're doing more with this band than we ever did with any of our previous bands." |
Musically were there certain bands that you tried to emulate when you first started playing?
The 2 records that I learned how to play guitar from was Propaghandi’s How To Clean Everything and Lagwagon’s Trashed. I remember my mom actually was like, “You need to learn how to play an instrument.” All I ever did was skateboard. So if she’s going to make me do this, I’m not going to play something ridiculous. So I said, “Well, I’ll play guitar.” So she got me a $90 acoustic guitar called a Hyundai from a pawn shop. I took like 4 guitar lessons, and once the guy showed me a power chord, I stopped going to the lessons. I think I figured out a couple of Ramones songs or something like that. Then a couple of my friends knew Nirvana songs, so we stood around and showed each other what we knew.
I think shortly after that the Internet came out. One friend had Internet and he shredded on the guitar. He was like a Metallica superfan. He would find Metallica tablature and I was like, “Whoa, you can find tablature on the Internet?” So I remember I found something on the Internet that had all of How To Clean Everything and all of Trashed tabbed out. So I took a week off of skateboarding and just sat in my room with like 110 pages of tab that I had printed out. I tried to the best of my ability to learn all of those riffs and all of those songs on the 2 records.
Do you still seek out tablature these days?
Yeah! Now it’s a lot easier for me to figure something out. Now if I want to learn a song, I’ll just listen to the record and try to figure it out. But there are definitely a couple songs, like the solo on “Against The Grain” from Bad Religion. I looked that up a few months ago. I’ll look for the things that I think automatically sound kind of hard for me.
Earlier you mentioned that you were tempted to start a punk band now. Could you ever see Evergreen Terrace dabbling in punk?
I think the more punk songs on Wolfbiker probably are as far as we will go because that is our sound. I don’t ever see us being a band that would change our sound. The lead vocals would never stop being heavy screams. We’ll always have a scream-singing thing and the harmonies and stuff like that. I think that if anything, the songs will get better on the next record. Hopefully we’ll continue to mature as a band. I don’t think we’ll ever fully go to straight hardcore or straight metal or straight rock or straight punk. I think we will always be a mixture of them all.
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nice interview 
