Eagle Rock’s The Briggs are one of the best true punk rock bands playing music today. Like Against Me!, The Briggs have the feeling of a true working class punk band: no frills, nothing fancy, just great music, expert musicianship and a good time.
The Briggs also happen to be one of my favorite bands both to listen to and to see live in a venue. Never have I walked out of a Briggs show disappointed and never has a Briggs song come up on shuffle on my iPod that I didn’t listen to.
Too bad on a hot, sunny day backstage on the final day of the Vans Warped Tour at the Home Depot Center I wasn’t able to recognize them.
As I concluded an interview with a very nice band called The Human Abstract, my girlfriend/ photographer alerted me that a band was waiting for me behind us. As Mayday Parade was my next scheduled interview I swung around and without really focusing my eyes on the two men waiting behind me I said “Mayday Parade, right?”
The answer would be a no. It wasn’t Mayday Parade, it was The Briggs. Guitarists/ Vocalists Joey and Jason LaRocca to be exact. And because I couldn’t find a nearby hole to just crawl into and die I conducted the following interview.
(Note: I pick up the conversation immediately after I apologize for calling them the wrong band name)
LA.Cityzine: Uhhh…ok.
The Briggs: Ah, I don’t care, it’s the last day of the tour.
LA.Cityzine: Ok, I’ll start out with a standard question then: This is your fourth time on the Vans Warped Tour. What has this tour come to mean to you as both an artist and a music fan?
The Briggs: It’s better than going to the gym everyday. I don’t own a treadmill either, so pretty much running around and being nuts for ten hours a day [is my exercise]. And you get to meet a lot of people actually…
LA.Cityzine: You guys did the full tour this year. How has it been doing the full tour this time around?
The Briggs: You know, we’ve done a lot of interviews where we have been really pissed that day and we’ve said a lot of bad things about Warped Tour…
LA.Cityzine: But I’m betting you’ve never been called Mayday Parade before?
The Briggs: [Laughs] Yes, we’ve never been called Mayday Parade before, which actually doesn’t make us upset today because we are pretty much over everything.
LA.Cityzine: But if it was earlier in the tour you would have beaten the crap out of me, right?
The Briggs: [Laughs] Yes.
LA.Cityzine: So how has the tour been this year?
The Briggs: I don’t think Pennywise [played] at the beginning of the tour so for the first couple of weeks it was us and Against Me! who were the only punk bands on the tour. A lot of people were were like “Were not going to Warped Tour this year” on our Myspace and were saying that they weren’t going to spend $35-$40. But it eventually picked up and changed. Now there are more punk bands on tour. Band’s like Rise Against and, of course, GBH and the Vandals.
LA.Cityzine: It seems like the last couple of years the Warped Tour has been skewing more towards the screamo bands and the metal stuff and you guys are much more straight ahead punk.
The Briggs: But in a way you gotta feel proud that [tour founder] Kevin [Lyman] asked us to do the whole thing [this year].
LA.Cityzine: I know you guys headline the Knitting Factory sometimes, but you guys have been opening for bands like The Dropkick Murphys and Bad Religion a lot [the last few years]. Are you guys planning to go on a headlining tour anytime soon?
The Briggs: I think that’s really going to be our next step. We’ve done so many tours with all the most amazing bands, but I think we want to do are own tour for our fans… I don’t think we are going to support for a while unless we are asked to play [Warped Tour] again.
LA.Cityzine: Since you guys did the whole tour that means you did places like Las Vegas and Phoenix where it was a 115 degrees out. What was that like?
The Briggs: Actually Fresno was the worst, that was the weird thing… it was unexpected too. I mean it’s inland and it’s hot but we didn’t think it would be that bad.
LA.Cityzine: So no more tours in Fresno?
The Briggs: [Laughs].
You can catch the Briggs play an acoustic show at the Knitting Factory on September 20th before they head off to Europe to open for Millencollin.
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1 Warped Tour Interview Smorgasbord | LA.CityZine.com - Los Angeles // Aug 29, 2008 at 3:11 pm
[...] Warped Tour Interview: The Briggs [...]
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