Hot Show Alert : Coping Skills play O’Briens in Allston tonight! (Interview in Post!)
Tonight at O’Briens, we get a much needed dose of rock and that will be answered by Philly’s Coping Skills! With a new album fresh under their belts, the set is sure to be a great little treat to start off the weekend! I’ve been straight jamming these powerful anthems all morning and I think you’ll fall just as in love with it! With the album only being about two weeks old, this is sure to be a unique chance to catch this duo before they fully take off! With great Boston support on the set, it should be a banger!
Tickets are still available with doors scheduled for 8:30 pm!
We spoke to the band about the live show, the tour so far and the creative process! See you there!
You’re currently on your record release tour. How have these dates been going?
The shows have been all across the board. We’ve gone from playing a big room opening up for The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die and Pianos Become The Teeth one night, to a nearly empty basement the next, and all kinds of spaces in between. The only consistency on this tour has been positive responses from the crowds and other bands. That’s been really rewarding.
If fans haven’t seen the band before, what can they expect/look forward to from the sets? How do you plan these sets, mostly the new album?
Have no expectations. In just two weeks, we played a few shows with one drummer, went back to our original formation of duo bass & guitar sets, and are finishing out the last week with another drummer. Anything is possible at our shows. Regardless of the situation though, folks can look forward to a couple of goofs just trying to have fun. We kind of fly by the seat of our pants with our sets and end up spending a lot of time cracking jokes with each other and the audiences (crowd participation is heavily encouraged). We’ve been playing a bunch of songs from our new record every night too, especially ones we weren’t playing much at all before it came out.
“Worst New Music” is obviously so new. How long was this record in the making for the band? Were they all songs written fresh for the record, some old ones you revisited?
We wrote most of the songs a little over a year ago, last spring and winter. A couple of them are older though. “Baptism” is one of the first songs we wrote as a band, back in 2015 when we were solely guitar, bass, and vocals. Adding drums revitalized it for us, and all the production changes when we recorded it for this record versus the first time around have completely changed the feel of the song. We recorded and mixed “Worst New Music” over a couple of weeks in July and August 2017 with Evan Bernard and Chris Baglivo at Big Mama’s in Philly. They helped us find a sound that really captured our growth as a band since the first record. Working with another duo felt great, especially two people who could keep up with our endless joking around and last minute ideas. We wrote “User Error” right before we started recording, after we sent them finished demos for all the other songs. But it still completely fits the record.
For the new album, was there something really different you tried, something left-field and maybe something that you feel screams Coping Skills to past fans of the band?
We covered one Green Day song for a comp and consequently started writing a lot more songs with power chords than before. This was our first experience not recording our music ourselves. Bringing in Evan and Chris heightened the production value a lot. There’s way more layers and texture to the songs, making them sound more dynamic. The relatability and deeply personal nature of the lyrics has remained from our previous album though, which I think is something that draws people to our music. We’re still creating super honest songs about the way we feel and the things we experience. The lyrics are the common thread that keeps us Coping Skills The Band while allowing us to experiment quite a bit musically.
We’re still so early in 2018. What are some goals/focuses/hopes for these next few months?
We wanna tour as much as we can. Playing these songs and connecting with people through them is an important part of the process for us. We have a lot of ideas for the next record too, so we’ll be trying to find time to focus on writing as well, as counter intuitive as that seems. The goal is to take this as far it will go, and then a little farther!
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Tickets are just a sweet $8 at the door with support coming from Dump Him, The Baja Blasters and Fucko!
