End of an Era

Well boys and girls, here it is. This is my interview with Toms River's own End of an Era broadcast from McIntyre's Pub. You can check out the print in the OCC Viking News and soon at The Riverside Signal.

            

            In a day where the music scene mostly belongs to the “Single Ladies” who “do the Helen Keller and talk with their hips,” a band has to have an original sound to get noticed. Toms River band End of an Era bases their music on what they don’t want to sound like.

            Before a brief departure in 2009, EOAE had a sound that was original to the Jersey music scene. Since their reformation in earl 2010, they found their sound had been duplicated. Now with a new guitarist, EOAE hopes to introduce their fans to a new sound they’ll like more than the original.

DB: You guys have been together for five years but took a brief absence in 2009. What’s the story behind that?

EOAE: It’s no one thing you can put your finger on. Things just came to ahead that were building over time. It was probably the healthiest thing for us because now we’re really happy.

DB: Regarding your name, End of an Era, how did you guys come up with that?

EOAE: We get this question all the time and we usually give them 20 different answers. It’s something we’ve always wanted to call a band and it was just like, ‘Hey, End of an Era, cool.”

DB: Do you guys all rock out to the same music or do you have different styles?

EOAE: Well we all have very different styles in music, but we appreciate it all.

DB: What about the influence for your songs? where does that come from?

EOAE:  There’s always a lot of alcohol involved. But as a musician, what you do stems from a lot of what you listen to. We don’t necessarily go into a room and say we need a Nine Inch Nails or a Dead Kennedy’s song. A lot of it has to do with what we don’t want to sound like. That was the whole idea of End of an Era. We don’t want to fit into any one category.

DB: Which is really hard to do nowadays because every sound now has a label on it.

EOAE: That’s half of what we did when we regrouped. A lot of people caught up to the sound we we’re doing when we first started. We kind of had to go back and think about how we could make it different again.

DB: Well other than your sound, how have you changed since you first started?

EOAE: We’re five years older, five years better (and) five years more experienced. We’re not going to give you the classic answer “we grew as song writers.” From beginning to now, it’s like everything else. Things just mature on their natural base.

DB: Well I’m sure what helped you guys mature was playing in Brazil a few years back. What was that experience like?

EOAE: It was cool because people down there assumed just because we were an American band, that we were somehow a big band. They didn’t know what we were doing there but they were into us because we were Americans. And the only time they could sing perfect English was when they were singing The Ramones.

DB: You guys have been thru a lot such as new members and the break up in ’09. What has been the biggest challenge for you guys?

EOAE: Reinventing ourselves seems to be the most trouble. When we started out, we had new ideas and fresh ideas. Myspace, Facebook and all those other media forms had just started out so weren’t in a cluster of other bands. Nowadays, everyone is using those media forms. Now it’s like reinventing the wheel. And not only that, it’s trying to keep people interested. It’s a matter of keeping our fans happy.

DB: Well you guys have played Brazil, the Warped Tour, Bamboozle and a lot of other big shows. What’s next for End of an Era?

EOAE: Right now we have a five song EP we’re giving away for free, so we’re focusing and touring on that right now. We plan on having a new, full length album by the end of Summer. We haven’t done a full length since the beginning. We’re on the Tool and Nine Inch Nails regiment of one every few years or so.

            Everything End of an Era has ever recorded is available for download at endofanera.bandcamp.com. More information and tour dates can be found on their Myspace and Facebook pages.