The Wrecks
Orlando | August 7, 2017
words by kira Wilber
The Wrecks: Nick Schmidt, Aaron Kelly, Nick Anderson, Billy Nally, + Westen Weiss.
Based in LA and roots in Thousand Oaks, The Wrecks are a five-piece band who are taking the indie rock scene by storm. With only three days in a studio after the band was newly formed, their EP We Are the Wrecks was born and their hit single “Favorite Liar” was released. The Wrecks have been working on EP number two, along with a tour to accompany the EP this fall, so keep your eye out for a date near you!
I got to have a chat with the guys before their set in Orlando, so read below to get a little more familiar with the band a bit and their life during tour.
So you guys have been on this tour for the majority of the summer. How has life been since it started?
The Wrecks: Very different. Hectic. It’s been busy but in a fun way. Definitely lots of driving. Our last tours I feel like weren’t constant day after day, but this tours been like that. We were able to go out a lot more on our other tours and kinda like experience the cities a little bit more and we weren’t able to do that this tour but that’s just because it was so demanding. We didn’t have a driver yet either.
Since you guys are relatively new, how was it performing your first show compared to your show in Atlanta last weekend?
The Wrecks: First show on this tour or first show in general?
First show as a band.
The Wrecks: I mean it’s kinda been a little bet of a step-up. There’s a couple more people, we really only performed to like 3 or 4 people, and now it’s like 3,000. Yeah it’s just the difference between – I mean I don’t know I think this is direct correlation like how many people were at out first show and how bad we were and how many people are here now and how good we are because we’ve gotten better as well as the crowds have gotten bigger which is really exciting. When you do support tours, your job is to win over the crowd, so if we played as the band we were during our first show I don’t think we would be winning over the crowd the way we’ve been able to this tour and have that experience. We’ve had those shows where no one was there, but we played them as if it was a packed show. So it was really good for us to have those as practice in a way, and also just is a way to build our chemistry as a band, and now we’re ready for this tour.
You released your first EP back in February. What was that process like?
The Wrecks: The EP was re-released through our label. We initially put it out in April 2016, right before we left for our first tour. It was super DIY and we didn’t have a label or a booking agent, a publicist or any of that fun stuff that we are lucky enough to have now. We kinda just put it out. The right people heard it and the right people got behind it and just put it on the radio and put it on Spotify playlists, things like that. Now we’re working up for EP number 2.
So since you guys are on tour have you been working on anything new or are you just waiting until tour is over to solely focus on music?
The Wrecks: We did it before the tour, yeah. We worked on new music before the tour started and we kinda finished working on it – we’re still finishing working on it during the tour. We finished literally today, we set up our little portable studio on the merch table before doors opened and it’s just that DIY grind and making sure it’s done right and not compromising and that’s something that we’re really striving to do. The new music is something we’re all really happy with and not just putting it out because we have to get it out.
So what was the easiest song for you guys to write together?
The Wrecks: Our writing process changes with every song. Sometimes like our first EP, it was before we had really started the band, it was just some songs I had written and then we came together and everyone kinda implemented their styles and became what the songs are now. With the new songs it depends, it usually always starts on a guitar part.
What are your favorite parts about writing music together?
The Wrecks: I think our favorite moment is when everything is coming together, or we’ll high-five and play it back a few times and everyone’s just getting stoked on it. My favorite part of writing is the feeling of creating and being happy and excited about what you just made. The best songs come together so naturally and we had to struggle with that on the new EP. When we wrote them they came together really naturally but sometimes when you’re recording it doesn’t happen that way and so it was a really interesting process to produce a new EP again.
What is one thing you’ve learned from this tour?
The Wrecks: Stay out of the way and be respectful to everyone around you. We kinda knew that going in…show etiquette at a bigger level. Also getting your laundry done when you can cause I have not had clean clothes for a good week and a half. I’ve been getting merch, I got an All Time Low shirt I wore the other day, got a SWMRS shirt today.
How would you describe your music to new listeners?
The Wrecks: We kinda let them do that. It forces them to go listen to it now. You decide.
