I first met the boys in Aren’t We Amphibians back in April when they came through New York with Ben Quad. I immediately fell in love with them as people. They are an incredibly welcoming and endearing group right off the rip, which is nice because I have a tendency to give people every bit of myself pretty quickly.
This time they got into town early. The venue wasn’t even open yet and they were going to get food, so Josh shared his location with me and I wandered into the cafe about ten minutes later.
After eating, we walked up the block to a camera store that had a photobooth tucked inside and piled in to take a bunch of stupid photos together. There is something about Aren’t We Amphibians that makes most things feel like this. Three people who have known each other long enough that the band sometimes feels secondary to the fact that they are genuinely just friends who like being around each other.
A little later we were talking about my past addiction to Rust before falling into a RuneScape rabbit hole. This tracks. Brandon can apparently talk about Pokémon and basketball forever. Josh can disappear into MMOs and JRPGs. Tyler seems perfectly happy hearing about all of it.
Eventually I asked Josh to write me a setlist. He did. Then we walked out toward the stage because they actually had a show to play.
Near the end of their set I emptied everything out of my pockets side stage, grabbed my camcorder and ran up to stage dive.
All night I watched people go over heads, disappear into the crowd, fall down and immediately have hands reaching toward them. There are shows where a crowd feels like something you have to protect yourself from and shows where the crowd seems to understand that everybody in the room is responsible for everybody else. This was the latter.
Below are some questions I asked the guys leading up to the show.
You've called what you do "ballroom emo," which sounds like a joke until you put it next to Parade! Parade! and this idea of taking some pretty bleak experiences and turning them into something celebratory. When did "ballroom emo" first get said, and was there ever actually an idea behind it, or have people now spent more time analyzing the phrase than you did inventing it?
[Brandon] - I remember the term coming up in some of our early band practices as an observation that most of our music was in ¾ time. It was also around the time when everyone in the scene was discussing waves of emo and attaching themselves to specific styles so we thought it was funny to make up our own.
One of the earliest stories I found about you is that Las Vegas show where somebody started reading a children's book between bands and somehow the entire room got invested in it. Then years later you make Parade! Parade!, and the cover itself looks like it could have been pulled from some strange old children's book. Is that completely coincidental, or has that kind of children's-book imagery, where something can look innocent or playful while something stranger is happening underneath it, always appealed to you?
[Josh] - I would say it’s pretty coincidental. Honestly for the visual we really wanted it to be drawn but look like it still exists so that’s where the paper cutouts of all characters came from. I think there is something to be said for the vibe of the art reflecting the general vibe of the album though! Little more playful and happy etc. etc.
[Brandon] - We also really like the album art for folie a deux by fall out boy and wanted to pay homage to that style.
Brandon, I came across this conversation where you went pretty deep on basketball, creepypasta, the SCP Foundation, horror movies and video games. Josh and Tyler, which of Brandon’s rabbit holes have you had to hear the most about over the years? And does everybody in this band have one subject where the other two know not to get them started?
[Tyler] - Most definitely Pokemon and basketball. Brandon recently got into the WNBA and now I know a significant amount more about it than I ever thought I would. I would say Josh has a special interest in MMO’s because everytime we talk games it’s always old school runescape, final fantasy 14 or some other JRPG. I love hearing about the guy’s interests.
Because Parade! Parade! is pulling from things that had already happened rather than documenting the present, were there photographs, old texts, voice memos, demos, notebooks or anything else you actually went back to while making it? Or is the record entirely built from memory?
[Josh] - Entirely built from memory! Although I do wish there was something like that for the songs just for the archival purposes. We do have a ton of the voice memos from the writing process which are fun to go and look back upon sometimes.
Is there a song in the catalog that the three of you completely disagree about? One person's favorite that another person would happily never play again, or something you almost didn't release that has somehow become important to people?
[Brandon] - That has been a hot topic actually in the band because of our song mother nature. It's one of those songs where we stopped playing it for a while cause it felt very different from our newer stuff but now we are at the point where it is our most popular song and we kind of have to play it.
[Tyler] - If I had to lose a tooth to never play Mother Nature again I would pull it out myself.
What's the oldest unfinished Aren't We Amphibians idea that still gets brought up? Is there some riff, demo or half-song that's been following you around for years because nobody can quite figure out what to do with it?
[Brandon] - Perhaps unrelated but I have been pitching the idea of covering a specific pop song for years now and I probably will continue to pitch it til I die.
Josh, you've said you met Brandon on literally the first day of second grade and were pretty much inseparable after that. Do either of you actually remember that first day, or has "the first day of second grade" just become the official story because you know that's when it happened? What were the two of you like when you first became friends?
[Josh] - It actually was the first day of second grade! I had just moved to a new school in a new part of San Diego and I knew absolutely nobody. We both were in the back of the line in the morning while waiting for the first day and I just asked Brandon if he wanted to be friends and he said yes.
[Brandon] - I remember it the same way! Josh and I definitely got into trouble sometimes but we were always a couple of jokesters who liked to stay inside and play video games all day.
You three have known each other long enough that your families knew this friendship years before Aren't We Amphibians existed. What do your parents make of the fact that the kids who were constantly hanging around together are now disappearing for weeks at a time to tour in a band? Was there a point where one of them realized, "Oh, they're actually doing this"?
[Brandon] - Our parents have always been very very supportive of us and Josh was already considered part of the Cunningham family long before any of this music stuff happened. When the band started we all were living together too so it really is just a family operation.
Tyler, in that early interview, Josh and Brandon give this whole origin story and your contribution is basically, "I'm just the bassist." They also said they genuinely expected you to say no when they asked you to join. Why did they think you'd say no, and what made you say yes?
[Tyler] - I have no clue why they would think I wouldn’t want to, maybe because I didn’t do much of anything to begin with. I agreed to join because at that point in my life (senior year of high school) I didn’t know what my purpose was. The idea of playing music,especially in a band, brought me that purpose I was looking for and I haven’t regretted the decision once since.
Josh, you were involved with improv theater in high school, and a lot of musicians have to learn how to actually be comfortable in front of a crowd. With improv, you were already putting yourself in front of people without even knowing exactly what you were going to say next. Do you think doing that so young made becoming a frontman and performing live easier for you, or did playing music in front of people feel like a completely different kind of vulnerability?
[Josh] - Yeah absolutely it made it an easier transition for me. If I never did improv I would probably be very quiet and reserved in between songs but I think it made me way more comfortable on stage and talking to an audience without any sort of plan. But it still is at least a different kind of vulnerability, especially with playing emo music.
