Grooveshark Artists

Last Halloween, we had the opportunity to meet & mingle with several artists during the Fest 9 and our first annual “Grooveshark Sessions”. Around 17 artists met up with us at Medusa Studios to record one live, acoustic track and an interview to be exclusively released via Grooveshark. After months of unwinding, editing, mixing, mastering, etc. - the tracks and interviews are here!

Next on our list is the Riot Before, a band that’s generally considered a staple at The Fest. Appropriately so, the stories they shared in this interview, their infection with the “treacherous rhythms of rock and roll”, and their we’ll-show-you-how-to-party attitude affirms their presence. And on top of all that, they’re insanely nice dudes with a thoughtful, eloquent, and carefully constructed message to share. Check out their interview below:

We’re here once again at Medusa Studios for the Grooveshark Fest Sessions. We’re with Brett Adams from the Riot Before – he just played an amazing song from their new album that just came out on Paper + Plastick. Tell us about the new album and the process of putting it together.

The album came together I guess 2 years ago, and actually conceptually came together when I was sitting around in my backyard re-reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I came across this line in the chapter called Rebellion: “one can hardly live under rebellion, and I want to live.” I immediately read that line and was like: that’s going to be the name of the record. So for the next 8 months, I just sat down and thought about what that meant to me. Lyrically, the record comes from those themes of the inadequacies of a lifestyle built on rebellion, but more on the latter half of “I want to live” – what does it mean to live fully, what are the things that are required for that? Does it mean that you’re just sitting around saying “no” to things all of the time, which is basically what rebellion is? That was the concept behind the record. Musically, it was pretty awesome because it was the first time I feel like we really worked together as a band on the songs, and everybody’s ideas were in there. And then we recorded with J. Robbins, which was incredible.

Very cool! Which studio did you do that in?

Magpie Studios in Baltimore, MD. I was in Baltimore for two weeks, which is beautiful! It looks like the Wire… everywhere.  

So, do you guys call Richmond home?  

Yeah, we all live in Richmond. None of us are actually from Richmond, but we’ve all lived there. I’ve been in Richmond for 5½ years, everybody else a little bit longer.   What’s it like being a band out of Richmond? Richmond is a great place to be a band in, especially if you want to tour. It’s a pretty cheap town still, I mean depending on where you live, and it’s in the center of the East coast next to a whole lot of cities. So if you’re going to be touring, you can pay your rent while your gone and you have short drives everywhere. And I really, really like it. Playing locally is a little bit of a struggle sometimes. Everybody I know is in a band, and everybody tours; so when they’re home from tour there’s not this big sense of community and going to shows together. You just saw 60+ shows and would rather just drink at the bar with your friends. And I’m totally guilty of the same thing. It’s almost a place where bands go so they don’t have to watch bands, and then they go play shows elsewhere. It’s a great city though – I love living there.    

So, we’re on day 2 of Fest now. You played your show – yesterday? How was it?  

Pretty much the best show we’ve ever played.   Which I can imagine – I’ve seen you guys live before at 1982 and it pretty much knocked my socks off. Aside from having a great show, of your Fest experiences so far – anything stick out? You know, we’ve been touring for almost 5 years now. You meet everybody on the road touring, and then you never see them again. So for us, the Fest is a punk rock reunion. I was joking earlier about how many dudes I’m going to hug this weekend. It’s just my weekend of hugging dudes - I’m probably going to hug about 200 dudes. [laughs] It’s just all these people you never see and you’re so excited to see again. So you know, last night at the hotel we partied in a hallway until 4AM just catching up with all these guys we never really see – it was a ton of fun.    

One Fest experience I did want to revisit was that great story you told me earlier involving urinals on the fly?

  I won’t name names, but I met up with a friend of mine while he was sitting at the pool hungover. He was telling me that last night when he was hammered watching Defeater, it was so crowded but he had to piss so badly. But, he didn’t really care because he was hammered…. So he just walked up to the bar, nestled right up against it, unzipped his fly, stood there, and just relieved himself while Defeater was playing. He possibly could have ordered a drink while peeing under the bar. And people were shoulder to shoulder packed – it was scary in there. So uh, that’s the Fest, I guess?

So for the listeners that have not been, this is what you have to look forward to! Yeah, possibly getting peed on! Just don’t stand near the bar. That’s the lesson to learn there. Or, if you have to pee – stand near the bar. Either way.

Good lesson. Thank you for coming in, Brett – we had a great time! Everyone be sure to check out their new album Rebellion on Paper + Plastick!