by Stella Kim
LINKS:
STELLA KIM: Who are you?
DAVE AGUILERA: I’m Dave, I play guitar for Bleed the Dream.
TOM BREYFOGLE: I’m Tom, I play drums.
MARK HOLMES: I’m Mark, I sing.
SK: What are you up to?
DA: The album came out about a month ago. Right now we’re on American Head Charge/Godhead tour doing a run through the States. This is more of a warm-up tour for the Warped Tour for us. Right after this, we go home and get our Warped Tour set together and then we’re doing the entire Warped Tour. Then in the fall, we’re going to Europe.
SK: Tell me about the new album, Killer Inside. Tell me about working with the new vocalist and drummer, title, favorite songs, whatever you want to talk about.
MH: We definitely went to a different direction musically with myself being the new singer and Tom being the new drummer. The new singer was the big thing for a lot of people, as it is with a lot of bands obviously. Instead of choosing someone who was going to be a copy of what the band’s always been, they chose me. I have a unique voice, and the whole direction of the band was changing anyway, so that coincided with what I could bring to the table, which resulted in a more mature and musically challenging record than anybody would have expected from Bleed the Dream. It’s a new band. It commands a much wider audience than our live shows reflect. Right now, we’re trying to go over and above and beyond and prove ourselves because it’s really, essentially a new band.
DA: We had two choices when we got rid of Brandon (the original singer.) We sat there and asked ourselves, did we want to try and replace him with someone similar to him or go on a whole different route? Since we were already musically going in a whole different direction, we said, "What the hell, let’s go for it and put out something completely different from the last record."
SK: You recently taped a video for “Closer” off the second album. Any fun anecdotes during the filming that you can tell us?
MH: Any fun stuff? Dave and I make out!
SK: Details, please!
DA: No details. Actually it was not that pleasant. It was pretty funny. Mark’s dying and I have to do a CPR on him. We said. "If we’re going to do it, let’s really do it." So we definitely gave him a CPR in a big way.
MH: Yeah, like six times!
DA: Yeah, all the girls from the set were like “Oh, let’s do it one more time,” and the cameraman was getting a kick out of it too, so he was like “Oh, let’s get a different angle.”
TB: Yeah, that was a pretty fun one. They put the camera where Mark would be and I had to come in like I was giving him a CPR, but it looked like I was in porno coming in for head or something.
SK: All right, I didn’t expect that, but that was awesome. Rock’n’roll! So you have been one of the regulars on the Warped Tour and will be on again this year. Tell me about being on the Warped Tour -- the good and the bad.
DA: A lot of people have opinions on the Warped Tour, and you can’t really, truly have an opinion on the Warped Tour unless you’ve done the whole thing. This is basically what happens: You show up, you meet all these new people. It’s exactly like school. This is how school works for me. I always loved school for about the first month. Then I’m over it, I hate it, I can’t wait for the summer to come again. The Warped Tour for me is exactly like that. You get there, meet all these new people, you’re having a fun time, partying, but once that wears off, it’s more about the work. But even though it’s a lot of work it’s cool because everyday when you get on stage, you’re playing in front of thousands of kids and you get reminded of why you’re there. Bad stories, I wouldn’t really have any, other than if you’re a wimp and don’t like to work, you’re going to hate it because it’s a lot of work. But if you’re the type of the person who doesn’t really mind working hard for your band then you’re going to love it. And it’s a blast. It’s a big summer camp.
TB: (To Mark) You’ve been on the Warped Tour.
MH: Yeah, I’ve been on the Warped Tour for about two weeks with my other band that I was in before, Like Yesterday, but we did it in a van, and I’m looking forward to doing it in a RV with air conditioning at least a third of the day.
SK: Tell me about your influences, personally and as a band.
MH: Personally everybody’s going to come from different places, any band would, but this band in particular coming from different backgrounds, most notably backgrounds we come from in the last five years. I definitely come from a little bit of indie rock background, I know that’s what I might be bringing to the table so I’m settling myself into this Warped Tour genre but wanting to bring something cool to it so we don’t become some Warped Tour cookie cutter band.
SK: Oh yeah? Tell me a Warped Tour cookie cutter band.
DA: No way!
MH: No, not gonna do it. That would be mean.
DA: Tom, what are your influences?
TB: Right now, for this record, I was really influenced by Smashing Pumpkins and Queens of the Stone Age. Their drummers are huge influences on me.
DA: I was influenced by my band.
MH: I would say that, too. We did the record so quickly. We had a month to record it and three to four weeks before that to write the songs. So there was really no other time to take any direct inspirations from anywhere else besides each other.
SK: It’s been two years since Scott Gottlieb, the former drummer, died of leukemia. How did his death affect the band and the music?
DA: I wouldn’t say it had much to do with the music. I would say it had more to do with Keith and my personalities in general. It’s hard to explain, but when you’ve gone through a death of someone really close, like a family member, it makes you grow up real fast. As you grow up, whether it’s age or something happening to you, it affects everything around you. It affects your personality, and your personality has so much to do with your songwriting.
SK: I read that all the members have been in various local bands before leaving to California and forming Bleed the Dream. Were there moments that you thought you were never going to “make it” and give up?
MH: I definitely had a moment when I turned thirty and quit music altogether. I was in this band called Like Yesterday that I started with the bassist from Taking Back Sunday. About two or three weeks after we started the band, he went to Taking Back Sunday. We did pretty well but didn’t go as far as it needed to go to make a career out of it. That’s when I quit music. I said I’m done with this, I’m not happy chasing this dream, it seems more glamorous than it actually is. I was working as a clothing stylist doing videos for music artists and whatnot for years until I got a call one day from Dave asking me if I wanted to sing for the band. There was definitely a point where I was thinking, do I really want to get back into the music industry? And the answer was “yes”, and as I recorded this band, I realized I needed to be doing this, so that was the confirmation to all that.
DA: To this day, I don’t really know what it really means when people say you feel like you made it because I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I made it. I think as soon as you feel like that, that means you’re on top and you got nowhere else to go but to fall back down. I don’t care if you’re selling millions of records. If you have the mentality “Yeah, we’ve made it,” you set yourself up for future failure. Music for me is all about the challenge, and why should you feel like, all of the sudden because you have millions of dollars, it’s no longer a challenge?
TB: I didn’t quit the music industry, but I quit focusing on even wanting to be a drummer. I hadn’t even played drums in six months when I tried out for the band. I moved to L.A to be a recording engineer. Out of luck, I found out about the band and tried out.
SK: Tell me about your best and worst touring memory. And don’t say “what happens on the road stays on the road”!
DA: For me, one of the best was Dir en Grey tour we recently did. It was probably one of the best tours I’ve ever done. Every night, sold out, Wiltern, Avalon, playing in front of two, three thousands kids, never seen us playing before, responses are insane, loving it. The guys in the band are amazing. We walked into the whole situation thinking what do we do, they don’t really speak English!
SK: They don’t really, do they?
DA: Not really, two of them kind of do. But it ended up being a blast. They ended up being the coolest guys in the world. They would give us beer, whatever extra they had. Made some really good friends on that tour. A couple guys had birthdays on that tour. Those were pretty wild nights, cakes flying everywhere. It got pretty crazy backstage.
TB: My favorite experience on Dir en Grey tour was probably the New York show because it felt to me like a headlining show. Two thousand people going nuts. That was pretty awesome.
MH: My best and worst nights probably happened when I wasn’t aware of them and when I didn’t remember them the next day and had to be told what I did. There have been a couple of those.
DA: I got lost in New York City. I was so drunk. That was pretty bad. I couldn’t make sense of avenues and streets. I was calling every member of my band and yelling at them because in my head, I thought they all had this ulterior motive to get me lost, and the cops were out to get me too. “I’m gonna punch you in the face!”
SK: You said Bleed the Dream is essentially a new band musically and in other ways as well. So where are you going from here?
MH: To the top!
DA: I don’t know, where are we going from here?
MH: Well, I think it’s the question of where our audience lets us take them. The band took a big step forward. We have a lot more up our sleeves to go even further. Like we said, we wrote our record within a month. We were catching a vibe off of each other by the time we had to go and record and things were getting really good and interesting. So there’s a lot of on-tap creativity. I’m into big epic things, the idea of filling outdoor coliseums with big atmospheric sound, something like The Cure is capable of doing. It’s the ocean thing I’m into, the idea of throwing it out there.
DA: We played Taste of Chaos in Long Beach, sold out, sixteen thousand people, right after My Chemical Romance. I was like, there’s no way I’d rather play in front of four hundred people. I’d much rather play in front of sixteen thousand people. I think for us, it’s about big audience.
MH: For me, the most magical moments in music, and I’m speaking about being in the audience, have always been when music has been able to transcend the moment, okay, I’m at the Avalon in Los Angeles at nine thirty at night. The best moment for me is when I’m overcome listening to the sound and I forget, even for five minutes, where I am, who I am, nothing else matters. To have that kind of effect, that’s always been a goal of mine, and I think we’re capable of doing it.
SK: Finish this sentence. “You would love Bleed the Dream if...”
TB: If you like 30 Seconds to Mars, The Used, or Smashing Pumpkins.
MH: If you like to get drunk, have anal sex, and get lost in your own world of sonic crazy epicness.
DA: If you like to have a good time. We take our music seriously, but we like to have fun too. We try to make all of our shows a big party. That’s one thing a lot of bands have lost, I think. Sometimes bands get so serious that they lose out on the idea of why people go to concerts. People go to concerts to get away, forget about the reality of what’s going on outside. I think that’s what we’re always trying to bring to people. Hey, you’re here, you’ve paid for your ticket, let’s get crazy here tonight, let’s talk about this tomorrow. Let’s find out how crazy we can get tonight and regret it tomorrow.
MH: I saw us for the first time yesterday. Fox taped us performing four songs, and I saw us in a sense that they played us back what we did. You watch each musician in the band, it’s amazing. Tom is going crazy on his drums, Dave’s got his thing, and Keith, he’s a beast, Keith is a beast!
DA: To go along with that, it’s honest and sincere. There’s no “Hey, in the third song, let’s both rock out together. Keith, stand right behind Mark.” There’s no choreography. A lot of bands do that! I have no clue what I’m going to do on stage tomorrow. We try to keep it spontaneous.
SK: We’re going to play this game called Punk or Hippie. Two of you are going to decide whether the other one is Punk or Hippie. Got it? First, Mark.
TB: Hippie.
DA: Hippie.
SK: Dave.
MH: Hippie. Way more than me.
TB: For someone who doesn’t really know him, the obvious answer would be punk because of the way he looks, but there are times I’ll be getting a piece of chocolate or something and he’s like “Tom, that’s the last thing your body needs.” So that’s a total hippie.
DA: Yeah, I’m a total hippie. I’m always about, “Yeah, let’s all get along, it’s cool, we’re a team, we’ll work it out, we’re one big happy family”.
SK: Tom.
MH: He’s a punk. He’s a reserved punk.
DA: Yeah, a reserved punk.
SK: Final words?
DA: Anal sex.
MH: Caffeine.
DA: No, seriously, thanks for having us. We appreciate it. Anybody who reads this for the Warped Tour, make sure to come to our merch booth in the morning. We have a little surprise we’re doing every single day at a different time. Trust me. You will be happy!
Bleed the Dream is currently
on the Warped Tour. Their second and latest album, Killer Inside,
has been released and is on the shelves right now.