November 11th, 2008 
James Shotwell I met up with Tia and Jeff from Bridge and Tunnel at THE FEST outside The Kickstand in Gainesville, Florida. I inquired about their new album “East/West” (which we gave a 10/10 here at Under The Gun), tour stories and their Fest experience!
UTG Billy: I’m here with members of Bridge and Tunnel – go ahead and introduce yourself and say what you do in the band.
Tia of Bridge and Tunnel: My name is Tia and I play bass and do vocals.
Jeff of Bridge and Tunnel: I’m Jeff and I do guitar and vocals.
UTG: So, what is recent news for Bridge and Tunnel?
T: Well, we are in the middle of a two month tour which has been going really well. It’s our first time going to the west coast, so far its been really awesome and we’ve had a great time.
J: Our first full length just came out. It’s called “East/West”, and we’re going to Europe in April to tour.
UTG: Right on, what is the writing and rehearsing process like for you guys, do you go back to New York or –
T: Yeah, we practice in Huntington Station on Long Island which is where most of us are from and we do epic long practices once a week. We spend the day and since we all have jobs its hard, but we spend a day just writing and rehearsing and collaborating. The writing process is a wonderful collaboration of all of us which is great because we all get creative input.
UTG: I have a question for you, Tia, as one of the female members of Bridge and Tunnel. Since the explosion of female fronted bands like Paramore or Light This City, have you gotten more attention or offers to promote the band?
T: I haven’t really seen anything different though it is nice that women in bands are becoming more frequent and more accepted, and women should be taken exactly the way men are in music – critisized exactly the way men are, and I feel that has been happening a lot more and it’s really really nice.
UTG: Do you have any tour stories?
T: We’ve been on tour for the past two weeks with O, Pioneers!, a really awesome band from Houston, and recently we’ve been getting into van wars while driving and caravanning with them, and one evening they poured a can of jelly on our windshield and we stuck some donuts and bananas on theirs. The best part is the day following that we decided to get an oil change, so we had to clean up the van with all the jelly, because we didn’t want the poor oil change guy to be like what is this? So we got the oil change, and when we were done the guy was like, was there any reason there was a donut under your gas cap? Come to find they had stuck a donut where our gas goes and the oil guy found it.
UTG: That’s really good. So what bands were you excited to see here at The Fest?
J: Alot of our weekend was spent seeing friends from home. I saw a lot of bands at this venue. Unfortunately, a lot of times had conflicted with our schedule and the venue we had to be at yesterday. On friday night we saw Cheeky play an amazing set at this venue right here, the Kickstand, and it was really one of the best performances I’ve seen in a really long time, they’re our friends from home and really they were phenomenal.
T: Also our friends Jonesin and Iron Sheik played that show and both bands were phenomenal. We are also excited to see Algernon Cadwaller today, all at this venue. Its nice that they’re all situated at this DIY venue.
UTG: I am definitely excited to see them. So you just came out with your first full length. Listening to it now, is there anything you would change or songs you would add?
J: Well, we actually cut two songs from the record. We orginially wrote too much material to fit on to one LP but the recording process was really wonderful. We went to Kevin Radderman at a place called The Funeral Home in Louisville, Kentucky. I wouldn’t change much about it, I’m really happy with the way everything came together.
T: Yeah, I kinda agree. That’s the downfall of recording. There is always stuff that you want to change about it, but you have to accept it is what it is and it’s a work of art and it’s always going to have little flaws but sometimes you have to let things go and accept what it is and so far I think it came out really good.
UTG: Halloween happened at The Fest this weekend – did you wear costumes and if you didn’t, what would they have been?
T: We didn’t wear costumes since we had been on tour for 6 weeks, we didn’t have much time to get anything together, but what could we have been?
J: I dressed up like a clown one year, and putting clown make up over a beard was pretty uncomfortable, I probably wouldn’t do that again.
T: I thought it’d be really fun for us all to be Harry Potter characters but I think that idea got nixed pretty quickly.
UTG: So at Under The Gun we don’t do final questions, we just let you have the floor and close the interview for us.
J: Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
T: Thanks for listening to us and have fun and enjoy our music!
*Written By: Billy Table*
James Shotwell is the founder of Under The Gun Review. He loves writing about music and movies almost as much as he loves his two fat cats. He's also the co-founder of Antique Records and the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. You should probably follow him on Twitter.
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