WE ARE JOINED BY BASSIST CURTIS AND DRUMMER ERIC

 

508: Starting with the basics-explain your name to our lovely readers.

 

CURTIS: So basically before me and him [Eric] came to the band our lead singer and guitar player, Gabe and Austin, were trying to look for a name for the band.They started driving around Riverside, looking at street names. The Magnolias, The Jacksons, something like that [Eric laughs]. And from across the street they see the restaurant Norms. So they were thinking about it like, "The Norms, okay."  Basically it was pitted between Magnolias and The Norms, did a coin toss and found out The Norms is the way to go. There's no real special reason to the name, they just got it from a restaurant.

 

508: You mentioned that you and Eric joined the band later. How did that happen?

 

CURTIS: I came in through the lead singer. Austin McCracken [lead guitar] and I were really good childhood friends, but I didn't know he was doing this whole band thing. And once they started getting into more rock stuff and their drummer came in, uh an older drummer before Eric, they had a three man band and wanted bass. Austin was going through some names, came up to me and asked me. I came in, tried out and they loved what I did.

 

ERIC: When I met Gabe I found out he wanted a drummer because his drummer left. I didn't know him that well but I was like, "Hey! I kinda drum!" Went to go audition, the old drummer showed me the ropes, then I  went home and practiced then uh everything worked out pretty well.

 

508: How have you felt the reception for The Norms has been outside of Riverside, as well as in?

 

ERIC: Outside of Riverside...you know, a lot of the music stuff I did before was out in Long Beach and LA. I've showed my friends from out there and they're all "Oh my gosh, so cool," so I think it' really well received out there. As far as inside [Riverside] with everyone's friends here I think its well received. A lot of venues around here like us, it's kinda surreal, actually.

 

CURTIS: I think inside of Riverside, where it's local, we do get a lot of good feedback. And then outside, not so much but that's because we haven't spread out as much as we should or want to.

 

508: Describe the sound of the band as a whole. We were listening to some songs earlier and were pulling references from The Arctic Monkeys to Bombay Bicycle Club.

 

ERIC: We've gotten a lot of comparisons. Vampire Weekend was one of them. We were called Coldplay once, like really? That's cool. Um, I would agree with you guys, The Arctic Monkeys and Vampire Weekend sort of thing.

 

CURTIS: I think a lot of music in general you want to relate to something so obviously, The Arctic Monkeys, The Kooks, we kind fill into that genre. You can listen to us and not get bored.

 

ERIC: We sound like those guys, but we're not those guys [laughs].

 

508: On your site it says you strive to "make music that is memorable and that people can relate to." How do you guys go about doing that without crossing over into campy, personal anthem territory while still maintaining your originality?

 

CURTIS: A lot of it is pulled from teen angst and that's relatable because everyone has been a teenager, you know. But I think Gabe tries to make it as general as possible to where if you listen to it it's not like...A lot of times when you listen to a song it's either "I, you, me." The music is more situational, a time and place.

 

508: Yeah, you don't want to pigeonhole your music. Some bands, take MGMT for example, will come out with an album and each is totally different but you still know its them. Is that something The Norms do?

 

ERIC: That's something we definitely try to do. We don't want to have carbon copies of each song. The new album we're working on right now you could call a little darker, tone and lyric wise. Which is okay, it still sounds like The Norms.

 

CURTIS: Our music does evolve, every band evolves over and over again. We are trying to incorporate other kinds of genres into what we're playing just because we are young. We're playing music just to play, not because we're trying to fit into any one thing. The music represents that, especially our newer stuff. We're trying to get a couple gigs out there and we're working on a music video. Those are our priorities. We still have a couple more songs we want to finalize before it's out there. Hopefully everything is to our liking. A great influence on this album would be The Strokes.

 

ERIC: Even the style of the voice is influenced by The Strokes, you hear that, so I agree with Curtis.

 

508: Do we get that Strokes feel mostly in the voice or with the band too?

 

ERIC: I'd say mostly the voice. The rest of the band, we bring our own puzzle pieces to the table.

 

CURTIS: It's just because The Strokes are a huge part of what Gabe wants to sound like. So you have Gabe and The Strokes, or Austin and Coldplay. You get me who pulls from Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pink Floyd that kind of thing and Eric who...what?

 

ERIC: Before these guys I played with an Afro-Cuban ensemble so there's that. I also played a lot of R&B stuff for church, and gospel. It's a different world. We all bring our own to The Norms.

 

CURTIS: Yeah, so Strokes and pieces of us.

 

508: Do The Strokes influence your stage performance as well, or are you starting to develop your own styles?

 

ERIC: Curtis and I come from a different area of music than Gabe and Austin do. We've performed with different groups so we get the sense of getting your audience into it.

 

CURTIS: Gabe wants to be the cool guy [laughs]. He's the [takes a drag from an imaginary cigarette] guy. It works with us though, I think he's great. Austin... he's real charismatic. He's good with the fellas, good with the ladies. On stage he gets a little nervous, but he still connects with the audience through facial expressions. Like, "hey babe," you know? [laughs] Eric on the other hand, you need to see him in his whole get up. Eric is the fanciest guy I've ever met. He dresses up really nice and once the show goes on, he starts stripping and he's looking like a fine young fella, performing the heck out of it.

 

ERIC: I'm mildly uncomfortable now. [laughs]

 

CURTIS: Sorry about that. Me, I try to perform best as I can. I've gone through high school performances and theater so I want to be as active as I can.

 

ERIC: Whenever I'm feeling down, I look up and go, "Hey, there's Curtis!" And Curtis is all jamming out.

 

508: What do you do when an audience isn't feeling it, where do you draw your energy from?

 

CURTIS: If I do get a little nervous or don't really see feedback from the audience, I try to be mature where I fake it to make it. Put a smile on my face and keep going. Austin does have the tendency to feel down on himself when it doesn't feel personal with the audience. But other than that, in general, once we try to put that energy in ourselves if we're not getting it from the audience then we'll go from the ground up. It will  go to the audience and come back.

 

ERIC: I think it's impossible to expect the audience to feel the same emotions as us. If we buy into it, try to have fun for us, then I think that vibe will go out to the audience.

 

GABE AND AUSTIN JOINED US LATER IN THE INTERVIEW.

 

508: Hey guys! We're going to head back to the topic of Riverside. Gabe and Austin are the Riverside boys here, does being based in Riverside affect the songwriting process?

 

AUSTIN: Well for the most part, it doesn't. I mean geographically it doesn't matter if you were here or New York or anywhere else, our music would be the same. It's just a little bit different trying to start off from Riverside since, you know, most of the bands here are all folk. We kind of don't fit in here. But it doesn't really matter, geographically. It's just, we are from Riverside. [laughs]

 

GABE: A lot of bands cite cities they're not even from. I know a guy who's in a band. They're from Anaheim but I look at his Facebook page and it's like "LA band," like no. But I'm cool with the guy.

 

508: Awesome. So there really isn't a "Riverside vibe?"

 

AUSTIN: If there was, we'd be playing some, you know,Mumford and Sons, some "HEY!" [Gabe starts humming The Lumineers] So no, I think we're more blocked out around our culture and we go mostly on what pertains to what we like individually. And that's what creates our sound and that's how The Norms was found. On the idea that it's not where we're at and what's going on in that place, you know what I mean?

 

508: Dang, that was a good answer! Alright, we wanted to know, what is it with The Norms' fascination with The Strokes?

 

GABE: Um, that's a good question. I mean for the most part we kind of imitate, not necessarily what they do specifically, but how they play it. The instrumentation and the way everything is set up is kind of the way we do it. We have one rhythm guitarist, one lead guitarist and not a lot of people do that anymore. To be honest, you get a lot of people who want to imitate the Foo Fighters. With the set up for the Foo Fighters you have two people doing the same thing and a lot of the focus is on the vocal melody as opposed to any other melody. So there's really nothing . It's not boring as long as the vocal melody isn't boring. I don't know what they [Eric and Curtis] told you, probably the voice thing [laughs]. If you wanna call people out I mean, Jack White sounds a lot like Robert Plant. Look at early White Stripes and Led Zeppelin, completely the same. And Julian Casablancas from The Strokes mimmicked Lou Reed from The Velvet Underground.

 

508: I see what you're saying. You have a pool of influences to pull from, as any other band would. Anyway, can you describe the process of writing the lyrics and the melodies?

 

GABE: What I like to do, I don't really focus on the lyrics. It's fine if they're good but the way I approach it is I find something that I like and me and Austin go back and forth finding melodies and chord progressions that we like, that not a lot of people use. It's fine to draw inspiration, but if you're verbatim doing the same chord progressions as like The Strokes or The Arctic Monkeys or something like that, then you're going to get caught real quick. So we keep doing that, siphoning until we find something we like. And then lyrics are added along with the vocal melody, completely seperate.

 

 

 

CHECK OUT THE NORMS ON THEIR SITE, WEARETHENORMS.COM. THEY ARE HELLA RAD AND WILL PROBABLY LET YOU HANG OUT WITH THEM. AGAIN-THE NORMS.

P.S. ERIC AND CURTIS MADE US PLAYLISTS.