If you’re like us you’ve been pretty sad since Banquets announced they were breaking up. But we have a new song, ‘Stop Signs In A Ghost Town’, to help ease that pain. We also had a chat with Travis. Check it all out below:
The end of Banquets is about the most logical ending of a band I’ve ever heard. It seems like it’s ending for the right reasons. Is that fair for me to say?
T: Yeah, there’s been things throughout history where bands break up for stupid reasons or drama. We just started to play music because we wanted to get together and play music. We were totally at that point where we were committed to not doing a full-time touring band anymore. It finally got to the point where we said “We’ll just do a 7-inch. We’ll do it on (bandmate Dave Frenson’s label) Black Numbers.” And then from there we were like, “Oh, I guess we better do a record,” and it spiraled into doing Real Band things. We did as much as we could do on the weekends in terms of getting back home for our jobs and
Did you ever see the full-time touring band option as a solution?
T: I did it when i was younger and now we’re all at the point where we have jobs that we’ve worked pretty hard to get to. I’ve got a job I like going to every day, There’s been fun things where we’ve done a long weekend, we did a three-week tour a couple of years back. It was great and all, but that’s in the summer when I have time off.
Yeah, you’re a teacher, correct? It’s just very interesting to me because a lot of people in the scene are satisfied being in a band and sacrificing the professional aspect of their lives.
T: Yeah, I’m a special education teacher. We’re older so we’re at a different point in our lives than other bands. So much gig neck every week. It’s something we’ve learned from playing in bands. I’ve played in bands for a lot of my life so we’ve learned what would and wouldn’t work. “This will be fun but it won’t be beneficial,” that sort of stuff.
Do you think you handled Banquets more professionally than other bands? Was it something you could handle with a more level head?
T: Yeah, I mean we looked at it all for fun, making jokes here and there, but the one band I took the most serious, I didn’t know a thing about what I was doing. I was saying, “I guess we could go on tour for 40 days, then be home for a week, and go out for 20 more days.” Things like that. Just not realizing at the end of it that “Oh, I don’t have any money.” I was really scraping by. And that’s not a “woe is me” story, that’s just a “being a 26-year-old” story and realizing you’re not on the same page as other people. At least with Banquets, everybody had a mindset of what we were going to do and what we can do. That’s the most important thing. That’s how a lot of band breakups happen. Just because people don’t discuss ahead of time what they want to do or what they can do. It’s very difficult to be in a situation where that happens.
Absolutely. That makes sense. Did you feel like you did what you wanted to do with Banquets in that respect?
T: I feel like we did. There’s obviously things that I wish we could’ve done but they were never things I expected we could do. I never thought we could tour outside of the country playing this music. I never thought we’d be able to do half of the things we did. And yeah, a lot of it was through people that we know that helped us out but it’s been cool. A few things I would’ve liked to do were things like touring the UK or touring Australia, things like that. It just wasn’t realistic for the situation we were in. I would’ve liked to have done a longer trip in Europe, especially the UK.
A whole lot of this touring band stuff just never seems like it’s economically feasible. At least from the outside looking in. Was that ever a defeat in your eyes or something that you just wish would’ve happened.
T: I wish it would’ve happened. I got emails from a lot of people. A lot of kids saying “Hey, come to the UK!” and I wish we could’ve. But getting us all over there and renting a van and a driver and everything, it’s a lot.
So on to the record, I think in the punk scene especially, there’s a mythos surrounding a band’s final record and whether or not it was the best way to go out. I’m referring to things like Jawbreaker’s “Dear You” and other albums of that nature. Do you think this is a fitting record to go out on?
T: I do, I mean, we knew that it was going to be our last record as we were writing and doing the lyrics. And there’s a few songs on there about being done, at least with the Banquets part of it. And the times i’m going to miss, and there’s obviously times I don’t remember but I’m sure they were great. It’s a whirlwind when you have a great night or weekend or a great run of shows. There’s times that just slip by you but it’s those moments that are sometimes the coolest thing. So i focused a lot on that and also trying to tackle some new topics. Writing from a different angle. The majority of the songs on the record are from different perspectives, not my own. A few of them are my own but a majority are from events that may have occurred in my life or circles in my life that I know about, but written from a different perspective. I tried to be “creative” on this one.
Most of the lyrics on the other records were more autobiographical?
T: All of Top Button, Bottom Shelf and the first 7” were all autobiographical over about a four month period that I decided to write about. The self-titled record there was a little bit of that, but i started messing around with writing from a different point of view or as another person. With this one, I did mostly that. I felt like it was my favorite thing to do. I write very abstractly, so for what i’m singing about or writing about, it’s easy for someone to take it in their own way which is totally cool.
That’s interesting, because a lot in this genre is very flatly to the point and overt with the meaning. Musically, do you feel the same way about this album being a little different?
T: I’d like to think it’s different because we tried to make it a longer record. When we first started banquets, I was pushing for the songs to be under a minute and a half. We saw that our first LP was 20 minutes long and I was saying “Maybe there’s some parts I could stretch out.” This record, we definitely tried some different things. There’s a song on there that’s out of the norm for what we’ve done and it’s one of my favorite ones, called “Lucky Lighter.” I think some of the other guys feel the same way too. We really got to experiment with it because it was the last one. We worked with Rat [Brett Romnes] from I Am The Avalanche in the studio and he was an awesome producer to work with. He had a lot of ideas and let us go with what we had for demos and we went with it.
I think it’s cool to step out on the last record. Not that Banquets ever had a definitive sound but there were tracks that i could absolutely nail down as a Banquets song.
T: See, that’s cool, because I always think “oh, that’s us trying to sound like this,” or “that’s where we’re trying to sound like that.” I never thought we had a distinct sound in any of the music I’ve done.
Some of that might be with the amount of your stuff I’ve listened to, but it’s absolutely changed over time. The voice of the band and how it sounds carries through.
T: When I look back, I can see that the sound matured over time. We got a new drummer after Top Button, Bottom Shelf, and writing with Brian, our newer drummer, was definitely a different process. When we started writing the last record and it all came really quick. We wrote a 7” and then said, “If we’re writing this we might as well do a full-length.” So, we went for it. Once we started going, it was awesome. Everyone got really into it and we got really psyched on it. We’re excited for people to hear it. Hopefully, they like it. If not, I like it.
You can pre-order the last album ‘Spit At The Sun’ now from Black Numbers. It’s out on October 9th.