“We’ve just grown up playing fast punk, and tried and true, play it loud, hard and fast and you’ll just burn it up that way… one of the most exciting things about touring is being able to get good at playing. We’re getting better as musicians and players.”

Shortly after their appearance at Skate and Surf, we had the chance to catch up with Tim Casey of Hostage Calm. We quizzed him on the Connecticut punks’ future plans for touring, recording, and what else may lay in store.

How did you start playing bass, singing, and writing songs?

My songwriting debut was in a high school ska band called The Jive Cats. Chris – Hostage Calm singer Cmar – played drums in that band, and it was high school, so there were a lot of inter-band relationships. Lots of sexual tension because we were all 15. Chris and I decided to try a different band where we both sang and I played bass while he played guitar; that was called Ted Kaczynski And The Mad Bombers. It’s been a slow evolution from there to where we are today.

Those two and another one I hadn’t mentioned called At All Costs. After that, it was Hostage Calm. We’ve also done some different side-projects that I don’t know that I’d qualify as “real bands.” I’ll say four total.

I’m stoked to tour with Less Than Jake. I love touring the east coast because it feels like home the whole time. I’m stoked to see JR from Less Than Jake, who plays saxophone; he’s from Wallingford, Connecticut, where we’re all from. I mentioned At All Costs, the band that preceded Hostage Calm; I remember going to his parents house and putting our CD in a mailbox there. He got it and I was like 16, and I thought it was really cool that he was in touch on such a low-level.  We were really young, just kids. He was in Less Than Jake and I was just a 16 year old. Also Pentimento is on that tour and I’m excited to find out who Tony Pentimen is.

Yeah. He was in Springfield Jack, a seminal Connecticut ska band, before Less Than Jake. I do not still live in Wallingford, but my whole family is still there and we still practice there. There used to be some great venues there, and as you said, Redscroll Records is there. I only live 20 minutes away.

That’s a good question. I feel like if you asked us as a band, and if we were going to answer candidly during our development… I feel like when we were a hardcore band, we had this dream that we would just go fucking do the thing. You know, release a great hardcore LP, do a national tour after school was finished, and then break up, like all the Rev bands, like Carry On, like… whoever.  I don’t know, though. I really try not to think that far ahead. We’re sort of going with the flow.  Everything is still developing in an exciting way; we’re doing new stuff all the time, and we’re still getting better at playing, which is exciting to me.

When you guys play songs live – especially with Please Remain Calm – there are songs that are done in the studio that are borderline 60s pop songs, but then live they become punk songs. Why the juxtaposition between live and studio?

This is kind of a shitty answer. I do feel like in some way, we’ve just grown up playing fast punk, and tried and true, play it loud, hard and fast and you’ll just burn it up that way. Like I was saying, one of the most exciting things about touring is being able to get good at playing. We’re getting better as musicians and players. Being dynamic… I don’t want to say it eludes me, but, yeah, it eludes me a little bit. When I grew up, you just play with the volume at 10, and as fast as possible. I want to say there are more dynamic performances in our future, not just ripping the whole time. Well, don’t get me wrong; we’ll always aspire to be ripping.  But at the same time we’re always trying to expand our repertoire as a players.

Well, I think that you’re never perfect, you know? As a musician, you can always get better. There’s always new techniques and new styles to work on.

Chris is straight edge, and all of us are either vegan or vegetarian. It’s hard to say whether there are big-picture political ideas that “the whole band is about this,” but if we were to be about anything, it would just be to be politically and socially aware of what is going on. I don’t know how to say this without offending somebody, but the pop/punk scene feels like it exudes this vapid, apathetic white male unaware audience, sort of thing. The vast majority of the dudes we’ve come to meet and hang out with in that scene have all been punk level dudes and have had good heads on their shoulders. I’m not sure how to quantify that sort of “out-of-touch” feeling. I don’t know if it’s a completely unfounded assumption; maybe it’s way off the mark? But that’s the way I feel.

Our dear drummer, John… it was time for him to go. There were no hard feelings. He’s a man of some years, and he had put in his time. [Laughs] Presently, we’re on tour, and Joe Longobardi from Defeater is filling in. He’s very good, but we don’t have a permanent drummer at the moment. We think often about who can play drums, but we’re not being very proactive about it, because we’re on tour all the time, or teaching the guy who can only do the most directly forthcoming tour how to play our set. Fucking drummers, man.

It’s very Spinal Tap of you guys. Has it been three or four drummers, or more than that?

It’s been three officially, but we’ve had some great long time fill-in guys, like Alan Huck who plays in Self Defense Family and played drums for a CT band called My Heart to Joy — he played drums on several tours. We’ve had a lot of classic hardcore drummers. Our second drummer Fred was in Fired Up! and the First Step, and John, who we just lost, played drums in With Honor and Ambitions. Joe, who’s currently filling in, was in a heavy Connecticut band called Palehorse, and is now in Defeater, D-Fang of Mindset fame has filled in, Chris Mala of CT’s Heavy Breath has played with us. A lot of hardcore guys on the kit, historically.

Seeing Saves the Day was radical. I’ve never really seen them, and -this may lose me some cred points, but I was never really into them until recently. Their late stuff is Beatles-y, super clean and has weirder songwriting. They are a remarkable live band. They sound just like the recordings. They sound unblemished. It was fucking great.

I feel like a lot of great bands played. And the weather thing is like, what do you do about the weather? I honestly showed up with a grimace on my face cause of the rain, but ultimately, I had a very good time. I watched Saves the Day, Glassjaw, and RX Bandits. It was ultimately a great time for me, so yes, I’d say so.

Written and conducted by: Dan Bogosian – Follow him on Twitter

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Dan Bogosian

I finished school with a music theory degree. Before I finished school, I was a janitor. You really should apologize to all the janitors you've ever had. You hurt them. Seriously. You did.

But, now that we've cleared that up and you called your high school janitor, know that I quit being a janitor to pursue writing about music. So here I am, and here you are, and hey how are you?

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