Sitting down with Josh Bradford, guitarist for Silverstein at the Vans Warped Tour.
18 Candles – Just released, can you tell me a little about it?
Yeah, basically we’ve been getting a lot of emails and letters and people talking to us, that want to hear our first EPs that we put out on our own, they went out of print like a really long time ago, so we released them on Victory to give the people what they wanted, regardless of what we think of them, because they are really old. The first 6 songs on 18 Candles is basically our demo that we recorded after being a band for like three weeks, so it’s a little rough, and the next 6 songs are a little better, took more time doing them, but its still like real old, really old. It’s interesting for a real fan of the band to get back and see some of the history, see where they came from, see how they evolved, and where they are today. It’s a “fans” record, for “fans only. If you haven’t heard our band, you should probably pick up anyone of our other records, either of the other two well before you even think about buying 18 Candles. But if you’re a fan and you have our other two, hey, check out 18 Candles. Its cool, we put some bonus stuff on it too, so its not just old stuff, there are some acoustic tracks on there, there are some live tracks and there’s a dance remix of “smile in your sleep,” it’s cool, that stuff is more fun for us. It made it less “putting out old records.”
Spiced it up a little bit.
Yeah, it’s neat.
Lets backtrack a little bit, can you tell me how the whole Victory thing got going, and Canada is somewhat of a stretch to Chicago.
Yeah, we’ve been a band for a while and we decided that we wanted to take it seriously and basically make it our main focus and we sent press kits to a bunch of different labels, we had a friend that was in a band on Victory, had him give them a heads up that we’re going to be sending something.
And it worked out.
Yeah, they liked it and a couple days later, Tony the president of Victory came up and had breakfast with us and met us and two weeks later came up again and caught a show on Friday night and we had the contract on Monday.
Your first CD that was released, the one with the robot designs, “When Broken is easily fixed” tons of your fans support that and tattoo those images, what are your thoughts on that?
Its pretty nuts to see somebody get a tattoo of something that you’re involved in and something that you brought into the world – I don’t know, its flattering but its also a little frightening at times, you just don’t want anyone to ever regret that because its going to be there for their entire life.
The “Smile in your Sleep” video, who thought of the “Clue” idea?
That was actually the director’s idea, and it was definitely something that we wouldn’t have thought of. I don’t know, it was kinda fun and kinda light hearted, so it’s really the first thing that we’ve done that gave us the chance to try not and be so serious, it was a lot of fun to make.
That was filmed in the Billy Madison mansion right?
Yeah, that was pretty cool, the movie was on TV the other day and we were watching it, seeing all the rooms we played in, in our music video, it was cool.
You think your finished releasing singles from “Discovering the Waterfront?”
I couldn’t even say.
There’s a possibility of another video coming out?
There’s a possibility, we’re going to keep touring for the rest of the year, then start working on a new record in the winter, so we have a while before we have a new record out, so we might pull one more.
It’s a while before you come out with a new record, any ideas yet on the direction that you want to go in?
No, we never really think about anything like that, we just get together and write songs. We’ve never consciously said like “we want to make a heavier record” we never have any specific thoughts on how we want it to turn out, we just start writing songs and however they come out, they come out.
The music scene before you got signed in Canada how was that? Ups and downs?
Hmm.Yeah, there’s a great scene in the suburbs where we are from, lots of awesome bands play there. Its pretty strong, there aren’t any real big venues or anything like that so its just rented halls or YMCAs and things like that, its strong, its pretty rad.
You’ve toured around to a bunch of places. Where’’s your favorite place to play?
Australia.
What about in the states?
Um… I like California a lot, I even like the small out of the way places, their interesting. The people the culture, whatever culture it may be, the fast food, the Deep South culture, its way different then what I’m used to and what I’ve seen so it’s pretty interesting. I couldn’t pick one state specifically, but we have a good time wherever we go.
Victory Records, is that working out for you guys?
Um, yeah. I don’t have too much to say about that. They know how to sell records. I disagree with lots of things sometimes. But they are doing what we need them to do.
I know for some other bands that they used to have signed, like Thursday; they use their name when promoting newer bands, usually by putting a sticker on the CD and saying something like, “For Fans of Thursday.” Have they used Silverstein’’s name on any bands CD?
Not sure.They might, hahaha.
I was reading how Thursday isn’t really happy about that.
Yeah, Victory is its own little world. They do things their way and they sure do them.
Haha, what are your plans for after Warped Tour?
We’re finally going to take some time off, almost about a month off, first time off since January.
Time to relax and see the family.
Yeah I gotta see my family, gotta sleep much..
Then after that comes…
After that September, we’re going out in Canada and October/November we are going to be doing a full American tour, headlining finally.
Who will you be playing with?
That’s with Aiden and It Dies Today and He Is Legend.
Any bands from your hometown that you would to see brought up?
Yeah, there’s a great new band called The Stick-Up that Shane actually has a record label and he put out their record and they are really good. I guess they sound kinda like Refused mixed with.I don’t know.At the Drive In.
What’s Shane’s label called?
Verona Records
How about biggest influences?
Biggest influences. I don’t know, um. hahaha. lately, we’ve all been listening to a lot of punk rock, we used to all listen to punk rock, but we’ve all kinda been into other things since 15-16 or so, but lately we’ve been coming back to punk rock. Maybe there will be punk rock on the new record, I don’t know.