Sean
Huck: So if you guys want to just introduce yourselves…Josh Bloom: Josh, drummer.
Matt Walsh: Hi, I’m Matt, on lead guitar.
Jason Bennett: Jason, vocals & rhythm guitar.
Chris: Chris, Bass.
Josh: That’s his last name, too!
SH: Can you guys just kinda talk about your sound, what the sound is behind Suspect Device?
Chris: Rock & Roll!
JB: It’s sort of whatever comes out; I mean, I write a lot of the songs, and we write a lot of them together, and it’s sort of a mix of all the stuff that we listen to. You know, I pretty much listen to such a wide range of stuff that it all gets influence in me. I think I can say to one specific [instance] about how you can change the rhythm and you get a totally different sound, but I think these guys have another take on that too…
Josh: Classical; we play Mozart.
MW: No, I think we definitely have a few punk roots influence but also there’s a lot of rock & roll in there as well…
Chris: Some folk.
MW: Some folk; I think a lot of it comes out sometimes in our live act as well, you know, a lot of our punk roots come out in our live act. We definitely expend a lot of energy – we like to have fun, like to give the audience a great show.
JB: I mean tonight when we play here, we do a bunch of covers for the Little League Benefit, so you’ll see some of the different covers that we do. Which, some of them are not gonna surprise you at all, and some might.
Josh: I think it’s got some broad appeal, because it’s kinda punk, number one, sort of, but it also has a roots-rock thing, so a lot of the rock & roll people can relate to it, and also the punk people can relate to it, [so it] kinda has a cross over appeal.
JB: If you go back to what punk was, it was just rock & roll, you know, it was just played faster with attitude…. If you listen to that stuff now, and compare it to like, before disco, early rock & roll, even the punk stuff is not that shocking, if you’re coming from a background of rock & roll. It’s just at the time it was shocking. There are probably people who are gonna be here tonight [who] won’t like it, because they’re here to have a couple of drinks and get something to eat. [They] aren’t into or don’t even like rock & roll…
Chris: We tend to be a little loud.
JB: Well, it’s aggressive, it’s not, you know what I mean? Sometimes people like Dave Matthews Band, and that’s rock & roll to them, it’s not rock & roll to me – at all.
Chris: Not at all! [band laughs]
Josh: Had to mention the D Band, didn’t you? Now you ruined my night!
Sean: Is there any particular message you want folks to take away from your music – any particular thing you want them to hear in what you play?
MW: I’d like them to hear the music, enjoy it, like it, and then to actually go out and buy the CD and put it into their CD player and listen to it again and be like, “Wow, yeah, that is really good!” And I think we do write words that do have meaning, you know? I mean our words aren’t just about have a party, have a good time – we do write about social issues, we write about maybe just hanging out, whatever, but there is a lot of meat in our words, So I think maybe one of the things is when you do get the CD back [home] and listen to it, you open up the jacket and read some of the words, you understand maybe where we’re coming from.
JB: And I think that’s something we try to do consciously. We all talked about it and sort of said that it would be ideal if you could come see us, see us play live, get into it, dance, get drunk and have a good time, and then you bring the record home and you can actually read the words and sit there and get another level [out of it]. Cause a lot of times, you go see the band, and you do – you go get drunk, you have a good time, you dance and you bring the record home, and it reminds you of that particular show that night, but there’s not necessarily another depth to it. So I think – especially when Matt, Chris and I started out, and Josh when he joined afterwards – that was sort of intentional, that we wanted people to be able get another level out of it. And I think –like I said, if anybody wants to tell me to shut up or disagrees with me, go ahead – a lot of the message of the band is trying to get people to think, and trying to get ‘em to hang in there, and trying to get ‘em to realize that whatever it is they wanna do is ultimately with the rest of their life [is up to them].
Chris: Just be conscious of yourself and your surroundings, that’s all. That’s what our music boils down to, as simple as possible. Be conscious of yourself.
Sean: What do you want them to be thinking about?
Chris: Just themselves and their place in society. And how to better themselves if they choose to, and where ills might be in society or if the ill is directly inside of you. You know, yourself might be the problem with society – just look within.
JB: Yeah, exactly, I mean – if you’re honest with yourself, you can very quickly figure that out. “Well, Jesus, maybe I’m part of the problem,” you know? Or maybe you see something that’s wrong and you go “Well, I’m gonna ignore it, I’m just gonna pretend it’s not there,” and just realize that you don’t have to do that. You can make yourself a better person, you can make the world you live in a better place. It’s not easy, and they’re not gonna do that but roll over and say, “Oh, well, whatever, it doesn’t affect me,” because it DOES affect you.
Josh: Getting back to [you go out] to see a band, like an R&B band, you go out to dance, and you go out to forget, so maybe rather than being background music, it’s foreground music.
JB: Right, it’s definitely not background music! [laughs]
Sean: Given the nature of your songs, given the nature of what you sing and write about, would you consider yourselves a political band?
JB: No.
Josh: Political is – that’s a loaded word, really.
JB: I think, I mean, yeah, there’s some politics in some of the stuff we sing about, but it’s more personal politics more than anything, you know? Like politics like, “This is affecting you.” Stuff like that in this country definitely has an effect on you. We’re not like this level of “This is the people, and there’s people who run the show.” Like if you read about Latin American and South American countries before a lot of the revolutions that took place, they think of America a lot like this, “Well the people are great, but your government sucks because you’re making our life miserable!” And there’s a disconnect in most places and that’s not like that here. I know the state rep that lives up the street, I can see him walking down the road and yell at him, so to that degree, yeah, things like that come up in the words, things like that come up in the message, but is it advocating for some party or political platform, no, because, you know, half of it’s bullshit on one side and half of it’s bullshit on the other! [laughs]
MW: I hate to sound like a cliché, but I think in a way, we kind of see ourselves as a working man’s band. I mean, we’re not out there trying to be…
Chris: Well we work! [laughs] We all work…
JB: And there’s no women in the band, so…
MW: We work hard for it – we work hard for the audience and we work hard for the music, and that’s kind of it, you know? We’re working men, I guess [laughs]
Sean: Give the fact that you’ve stated you’re more working class, you speak about working class issues, and that tends to tie in with the punk theme overall, how do you feel about the state of punk in Boston right now? Do you think you’re helping it, do you think it’s getting worse?
Chris: I just like being a piece of it.
Josh: Seems like its rising again, seems like there’s a real scene coming about.
Chris: The scene’s coming about; I’m glad just to be a part of it. I’ve always just sat back, and I’m new to this whole game. I always listened and took for myself from the scene, and now I give back. I act like a fool onstage. That’s my giving back – I want to go to show and see [people] act like a fool – I don’t want to see the record onstage, I wanna see a show!
Sean: So you think that Do It Yourself spirit is very strong here?
Chris: Oh yeah! I mean, I have a good job and I work for everything you see me play. My equipment and stuff – I worked for it.
JB: I mean a lot of times it’s not easy to get up and play a show – you worked all day long, you were out the night before, or you’re doing two shows in a row, and you don’t always want to get up there, but….
Chris: Or you have to catch a flight somewhere….
JB: [laughs] Yeah, a couple of secrets of Suspect Device: one is, if there’s a band that I want to see in town, that never comes – or if Matt [wants to see] – actually, yeah, if there’s a band that any single one of us wants to see that comes to town and they never come, like if it’s the only time they’re gonna be here forever – we have a show that night, and if Chris is going away, or Matt’s going away, we have a show the night before and they have to catch a flight at like six in the morning. Never fails. And it’s not just like a show that we go, “Oh, we won’t take it,” It’s a show that we’re never gonna get the opportunity to do again, we have to take it.
MW: I think, to talk about the scene in Boston, I think it’s a good scene right now, you know, we’re having a lot of fun with it. Like Chris was saying, we’re really happy – I’m happy – to be a part of it. Because it’s fun to go to shows and be playing shows with bands you’ve played with a couple times, or hang out with, you know? We go to other shows, and it’s great to see people from a couple different bands that have played with us as well, so there’s a great support in Boston right now. It’s good – it’s a very health scene.
Chris: It’s also cool that they’re the bands you’ve listened to. Your manager calls up and says, “You guys wanna play this night at the Middle East?” “Yeah, who’s playing? Who are we opening for?” “Oh, Citizen Fish,” Well, holy crap, you know, I’ve known Citizen Fish for, like, ever.
JB: And I mean, we all genuinely like most of the bands from around here that we’ve played with.
Josh: And I think that’s part of the difference, is that between the punk and what we call rock & roll or whatever, they’re all in competition with each other, trying to one-up each other. But for us, it seems like there’s a feel of all-in-this-togetherness; it’s a real brotherhood, family feel and happy to see everybody, and there’s lots of love around. Most people wouldn’t think that, but….
MW: Except for those Terror guys…
JB: Oh yeah, what are they, Terry & the…
MW: Tommy & the Terriers, something like that?
Chris: [laughs] Bad news…
MW: Yeah, they’re bad news… [whole band laughs]
JB: That was actually one of the best days I’ve had in a long time – we did two shows with them, and friends of theirs from Ohio, Blatant Finger, Tommy & the Terrors & the Lashes, and we were all at Tommy & the Terrors house in Quincy hanging out with the guys from Ohio in the backyard – it was an absolute blast.
MW: Yeah we had a big barbeque, cause we played Friday night at O’Brien’s in Allston in Boston, then we played in Providence on Saturday night, so Sunday afternoon was real nice weather, [so we had] a cookout. It was a lot of fun, and it’s like, that’s what it’s all about sometimes. Like we’re hoping when we go on tour, that when we go to Columbus the same thing’s gonna be able to happen when we go up there, which I’m sure it’s gonna be.
JB: And that show that night, remember? It wasn’t a great crowd, it wasn’t bad, but….
Chris: There was no crowd.
JB: Ah, it wasn’t – for Providence it wasn’t too bad – but we didn’t care, we just had a good time with all four bands playing together and having fun, and it was like, the night before in Boston it was packed, I mean it was really crowded, it was a great show, but I almost had more fun the next night, just hanging out, busting each other’s balls, having a bunch of beers, you know, hanging out with them all day long.
Sean: Now you guys had mentioned that you’re playing gigs, you’re trying to get out more, going to Columbus, other cities, and bringing bands in from other cities, do you think that’s important for the music scene, that you travel, and that you experience different places?
Chris: Yeah, once you establish your home base, and get a pretty good following here. I mean we’re still starting out, we don’t have the draws to play like every weekend and sell the place out, but if we play once a month, we do have a lot of loyal people that’ll come to see us and have a general good time. Now that we have that, we want to establish a couple of other cities and put a little seed out, for the people that come to town, help them out, and then hopefully when we go out there they’ll help us out – say “We’ve seen these guys, they were a blast in Boston, I’m sure they’ll be a blast here.” Wherever that may be.
JB: I mean look at the tour too, it was like – we had a couple of dates that we needed to fill in and we didn’t really know anybody in certain cities, so we ended up calling some of our friends around here,
and saying “Hey, do you know anybody between this town and this town?” And we had five or six people email in phone numbers, addresses, “Tell this guy I told you to call,” Called them and maybe you know, their band broke up or they’re playing another show, but that they gave us phone numbers for other people to call & say, “Definitely get ahold of this guy cause he’ll set up a show for you,” I mean that’s pretty cool that we can call people we’ve never met, we don’t know, and say “So-and-so told us to call, we’re gonna be in your town, and we wanna play a show.” and have him say, “No problem, let me get back to you in two days and I’ll set it up.” I don’t think there’s another scene that exists where you can do that.
Josh: All the other scenes are going like this [waves arms up and down], and in punk rock they’re going like this [holds arms up].
MW: It’s those communities out there and that’s what’s cool about it.
Josh: It’s family music.
MW: Yeah! Bring the kids, it’s great! [band laughs]
Sean: All about the family…Now, talk for a little bit, if you don’t mind, about what you’re doing here tonight – you’re playing a benefit for the Mission Hill Little League?
Chris: Yeah, this is the 3rd Annual; it started three years ago, obviously, with a story that Kristen came to you [Jason] with.
JB: Yeah, we’d gone to a hearing for a friend of ours to expand the occupancy of his pub, this place where we all hang out, we’re friends with these guys. We went down and voted for it, and afterwards this guy came up to me – Mitch – and said, “You know it’s really great to see all these young people coming to the community meetings. When I was younger we all used to go and do this stuff, and it’d be great if we could get those people to come more often.” And I said, “Well you know,” (he found out that I was in a band, he was asking about that) I said, “From the band’s point of view, we’d rather help out the kids, than help out some white guy trying to expand the occupancy of his bar, you know what I mean?” Expanding the occupancy of our friend’s bar is great, it wasn’t unreasonable, but we told Mitch, we’d rather help out the kids in the neighborhood; there’s a lot of poor kids in the neighborhood. There are a lot of kids that could sometimes use some help. And Mitch said, “You know what, I run the Mission Hill Little League,” and most of our friends grew up in this neighborhood we all know around this neighborhood all played on the Mission Hill Little League, and still actually are involved with it – they coach, they go to the games. Mitch said, “What we could really use is some money. We had a kid last year whose parents are Rastafarians who couldn’t bat all season because we didn’t have a batting helmet big enough for the kid, you know?” The kid’s showing up with his father’s glove that he used when he played the Mission Hill Little League. So I talked to the guys, and said, “Look, what do you think about doing a benefit for them?” And we all jumped on it right away. And I don’t think there’s anybody that said, “Let me think about it.” Everybody from the band said, “Let’s do it, let’s do it in Mission Hill.” We know the guys who own this place, so we said, “Do you think you’d let us do it?” They said, “No problem, we’ll put out a buffet, we’ll put out food….”
Chris: Which we’re missing, by the way. We’re missing all the food during this interview. [band laughs]
Sean: You’re sacrificing for a good cause!
Chris: Sacrificing…if I pass out, from lack of blood sugar, it’s your fault.
Sean: [to camera] Do you see what I have to put up with? You see what I put up with to bring this show to you guys? It’s amazing!
MW: I think it gives us a different side, you know? Well, I don’t know if it’s a different side, but…it goes back to the working man’s thing again! We’re doing it for the people that we’re living with right now, I think it’s a good thing – we like doing it. For us, it’s not a big deal, you know, it’s playing a show which we love to do anyway. Especially a show where you get to play two full sets, whether it’s 45 minutes or an hour, you get two hours worth of music, we get to throw out a bunch of old songs that we used to do, or covers or whatever, and the whole time we’re giving these kids good money that goes back to [the community]. And like every year, they give us a little trophy, and it’s cool, you know, it makes us feel pretty good.
Chris: First two years was good, so we’ll try it a third time – hopefully there’ll be a fourth.
JB: Yeah, hopefully they don’t throw us out! [laughs]
Sean: Alright, well we will definitely look forward to checking you guys out, so we’ll see you out there! Thanks a lot!
Producer’s Note: The night of the 3rd Annual Benefit for the Mission Hill Little League, Suspect Device raised over $500 for the kids. Congratulations, guys! We’re sure the Squealing Pig will have you back next year!