We’ve been sending John Naclerio our songs to mix and master since A Very Exciting Life, but this summer recording “Animal Familiar” and “Fists” was the first time we’ve gotten to meet him in person and work in his studio. So we’d really like to do a full album at Nada Recordings with him.
Recently we’ve had our friend Davey Ginger joining us on trombone for select shows in New Orleans and we’d love to have him do some horns on the next record. We’d also love to incorporate some rap influence and we were thinking of collaborating with the NJ group Melting Mindset, who played at our Meatlocker show this summer.
Do you have any tour dates coming up, or any shows planned for New Jersey specifically?
We are currently planning a January 2020 tour in California. However we’ll likely be back in New Jersey sooner than you think. Our show at the Meatlocker this summer went really well - we had a lot of friends and family come out but we also got a lot of new people who were interested in the music. We’d love to come back to the Meatlocker and also try some Asbury Park/Jersey shore venues, maybe in summer 2020.
What has you personal journey been like so far? How’d you get to this point?
All 4 of us have been in various bands for most of our lives and are really avid music lovers, so we each bring a slightly different musical perspective to The Bummers. It sort of becomes a bit of a musical stew at times, with a lot of different influences converging. We started in 2014, and I think in our stuff from back then you can hear those differences isolated in different songs. In our more recent stuff, those different sounds have really started to blend together and make a sound that feels a little more unique to ourselves.
We’ve been a band for 5 years now which feels like a big accomplishment. We all work full time jobs and put a lot of time and a lot of our own money into this. We work hard to make time for this, to make the best music and recordings we can, and to put on the best live shows we can with the resources we have. In this past year we’ve started to see our work pay off and we’ve gotten to do some great things. Dairy Beach was our first release to get some real press. We got to do our first TV performance in New Orleans. We’re getting bigger and better shows and also doing a lot more shows outside New Orleans. And this summer we had our tour and it was great to see that people were into our music in places like NJ and Philly.
Being a band certainly isn’t easy in 2019, it can be pretty expensive and everybody has to really be on the same page to maintain a constant schedule. I think because of that, you really have to genuinely love it.
Do you have any words of advice for people who share a similar passion or have maybe faced similar obstacles/challenges?
Play music that makes you excited. Don’t worry about how the crowd will react or what music other people are making and don’t compare your progress to other peoples’ progress.
Find other bands you like and help each other out - share your resources so you can build a community around all of your music.
Finally, what are some ways that fans can connect with you online? (Website? Facebook? Spotify? Etc.?)
Our music is on all major streaming platforms including Spotify/Apple Music/Bandcamp/Soundcloud/etc. Here are a couple of relevant links:
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/artist/441IiUTM9Sy6tb6wqaF2PK?si=7d8lGw0vROWMzIOwcANWHg
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thebummersband/
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAffos5hV9OP09QQXBMxtJw
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thebummersband
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/thebummers
We’re not on TikTok though because we’re not really sure what that is.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Be on the lookout for new music. We like the momentum that we have so we’re going to keep putting out new music constantly until long after everyone asks us to stop.