Paul: Hi! Please tell us who you are and what you do in the band!
TWY: Hey! We’re The Wonder Years. Dan sings and runs around like an idiot on fire while we play, Josh plays bass and kicks kids with his special order, size 16 Dunks whenever we play a breakdown, Kennedy plays drums and takes off more clothing than the every actress in Babysitters 11-13 combined, MattBrasch is punk rock (something about a guitar…), Casey also plays guitar and rocks out in the world’s slowest and smoothest manner, and Mikey K plays keys, yells and pumps his arm vigorously.
Paul: Can you give us a brief history of who The Wonder Years are, how you formed and what bands influence your music?
TWY: Basically, we were in serious bands that wrote ’emotional’ songs about ‘heartbreak.’ Then, we cut out the gay, added some awesome and decided we needed to start a pop punk band that is all about good times circa July 4th, 2005 (229 years after you got served. Hoo-ah!).
Paul: First things first…did you really play with Boyz II Men? If you did, where, how and why?!
TWY: Fuck yea! Don?t doubt that shit, son. It was a huge ordeal that I feel like you need to hear. We were supposed to be hitting up New England for a short tour last summer. Some shit went awry, and I called my boys in The Mile Highschool (VA-Gay Dudes. No Vacancy Records) and asked what they were up to August 12th. They informed me that they were playing Fort Eustis with the one and only Boyz II Men. Now, you need to understand, that all we listened to as kids were Cooleyhighharmony and II, being that we?re from the Philadelphia area. So, we weaseled our way onto the show. Long story short, two of us were banned from the base for life, I (Dan) stole a golf cart and drove it around all afternoon, we got into a big argument with the sound guy and some concert promoter that may or may not have worked with Boyz II Men and after our set, we got to see the Boyz play standing in a sea of close to 1500 rabid fans.
Paul: In 5 words, describe the typical The Wonder Years live experience…
TWY: Synchronized jumps and naked party-mosh. (How?s that hyphen feel, dog?!?! OH SHIT!)
Paul: You play a kind of melodic hardcore/pop-punk hybrid…is that a sound you’re all fans of and something the band came up with naturally?
TWY: We just stick shit we like together. Casey writes pop songs for a living and breakdowns make us feel like we aren’t pussies.
Paul: Your latest release is a split with Bangarang! How did that come about? Have you known those guys a while?
TWY: Bangarang! are the shit! MattBrasch and Justin (drums for Bangarang) have know each other for a really long time and Jake (bass for Bangarang) and Dan have been playing in different bands together since literally middle school. They are really awesome dudes and we?re really happy that we got to put this split out.
Paul: ‘I Ain’t Saying He A Gold Digga (Sike!)’ – you’re fans of Kanye then?!
TWY: Fucking right ‘we gon keep baking to the day we get cake. And we dont care what people say?
Paul: Have you considered trademarking ‘Let;s Moshercise’? How fucking cool would it be to put out an exercise DVD of spinkicks and windmilling?!
TWY: Literally one of the most disappointing moments of our year was when George from Valencia (PA-sweet hair. I-Surrender Records), informed us that this video already exists somewhere.
Paul: What’s your local PA scene like? Which other bands should we be checking out?
TWY: Jesus. There are a lot of bands worth noting from no more than a 20 minute radius from us. If you can, check out: Leavenworth, The Arrangement, Dead Again, Barricade, The Minor Times, Prevail, Koji on the Roof, Backseat Driver and of course Bangarang!
Paul: Your music video looks a hell of a lot of fun – was it as fun to make as it is fun to watch?
TWY: Yea, dude. MattBrasch made it kind of out of boredom. Its just a collection of clips from our summer tour, which, although barely a tour, was a total blast, as you can see from the video.
Paul: What’s next for The Wonder Years? Any plans for a release of your own?
TWY: We’re actually writing a full length now. It’s going to be called ‘Get Stoked on It’ and it should be out in September of next year. We aren?t sure who is putting it out yet, but we should be announcing it sometime this spring.
Paul: You also run your own label, Forgive and Forget Records. Is the name a Get Up Kids reference? If it’s not, how did you come up with it?
TWY: Yea, I (Dan) run Forgive & Forget. It?s definitely about the GUK?s song. My boy Mike and I co-run the label and The Get Up Kids are both or our favorite bands. He has the phrase Forgive and Forget tattooed on his legs along with the GUK’s robots.
Paul: Why start a record label? Which bands do you have on your roster and what releases have you put out so far?
TWY: The label is basically in existence to support my friends and the bands that I feel need the support. Currently, we?ve released The Bangarang/Wonder Years Split and on January 12th, we’re releasing The Arrangement– Stories From Home. You can check the label out at www.myspace.com/forgiveandforgetrecords
Paul: How have you found running a label – is it as fun/hard as you thought it would be? Would you recommend running a label?
TWY: It’s definitely a huge amount of work. I recommend that you make sure you?re not doing it to make money and that your finances are in order, because you aren’t going to be rolling in cash anytime soon.
Paul: How will you be spending Christmas and the New Year period? I see you have a show on the 26th, is that an excuse to get dressed up as Santas?
TWY: We’re doing a little tour right after Christmas. It should be a good time and although we hadn’t planned the Santa idea, you might be on to something…
Paul: If you have a festive message for our readers, please leave it here!
TWY: Have a Kwazy Kwanza. Also, when trying to copy this email into word, we started typing hotmail.com into Kennedy’s address bar, but the first auto-complete URL option was hotchicksbigasses.com. Way to be Kennedy’s little brother; way to be.
www.myspace.com/thewonderyearspa