When John Baizley and Peter Adams of Baroness were preteens, they played together in a band called Jab.
“We would build stages from two-by-fours and plywood,” guitarist/vocalist Baizley says. “At that point, we hadn’t even seen shows except for on television.”
When The Word Alive frontman Tyler “Telle” Smith played bass for Greeley Estates in 2008, he remembers trashing a hotel room. “We toilet-papered our hotel room for no reason,” he laughs. “We woke up with toilet paper everywhere…’What happened? Why did we do that?'”
When Æges frontman Kemble Walters played in Juliette and the Licks, he did a few studio sessions with Dave Grohl. “[Grohl] draws this picture and gives it to the runner there. ‘I want you to buy all these parts,'” he says imitating Grohl’s voice. “‘Here are the instructions. Make it.'”
Colorfully describing the enormous beer bong Grohl had the runner assemble, Walters says the energy during those recording sessions was crazy. “We destroyed [the studio] because we could. Dave Grohl was there.”
On the loading dock of a security-intense venue during the Anaheim stop of the band’s headlining tour, For Today frontman Mattie Montgomery reminisces of signing with Facedown Records in 2008. “Our drummer David [Morrison] was on the Facedown street team for years,” he commented. Montgomery says the band repeatedly sent Facedown demos of their music, but the label had no interest in signing the group. Then one day the label said “record the album and we’ll give it a listen.”
On a warm winter day at Bonnerhaus, the Ryan’s Rock Show headquarters in North Hollywood, O’Brother guitarist Johnny Dang speaks of touring with Circa Survive. “[We] were going to play a prank on them the first day of tour [in 2010], but they were too nice…” he laughs. Brother and bassist Anton Dang chimes in and says the pair had planned to speak only in Vietnamese — “We were going to pretend we didn’t speak any English.”