INTERVIEW: Young Culture on debut full length, touring with Homesafe and what’s to come
The music industry is about to say goodbye to their inboxes and say goodbye to twelve hour drives in the van for a few weeks but the rest is much needed for a sure to be a fire 2020 for bands. Bands that include the dudes in Young Culture, a band who I caught up with when in town earlier this month while on tour with Homesafe. The debut record for the band will be coming out next year (hopefully) and it’s sure to be their year.
The band just finished off an insane stretch of two tours, recording the album, then finished out the year with multiple holiday shows and are now surely settling in for some well deserved rest with family! But 2020 will not be a quiet year for this group and Alex Magnan, Gabe Pietrafesa and Troy Burchett from the band broke down the writing process for the record and what’s to come from them in the near future!
Looking at the dates, this has been a mammoth of a tour. Started like October 23rd, you’re coming to the end of it, pretty much nonstop.
Alex Magnan: Literally.
No one on here is like the big rockstar band, you’ve all been out touring. Maybe considering it’s your first full out US tour.
AM: It’s funny you say that, we’ve been calling it the tour of outcasts, because we’re all bands right now that are really just trying to get our names out there. It’s been really awesome though. This tour has been all friends pretty much on the whole tour. And it’s like we all kind of knew each other for the most part before the tour. It’s been really great so far. What do you guys have to say?
Gabe Pietrafesa: Yeah, tour has been awesome. We’ve done the US a couple of times, but we’ve never done like a full six week US tour like this. It’s cool though, it’s been cool seeing a lot of familiar faces. And going to a lot of the same venues. And even new places in new random cities that are really, really dope. It’s been a blast. We love being on tour, rather than just being at home anyways. We’re like that.
Troy Burchett: So I mean, yeah, just to piggy back off of that, we got to go to so many different places, so many different climates. We were in like 90 degree weather.
I’m sure this has been awesome.
TB: Oh yeah, this has been great. Snow.
GP: First time really being in this area in the winter.
TB: On tour, yeah. It’s been a great tour. All these bands we’ve played with before. We’ve had a blast.
Then its been almost a year since you released the last EP. January of 2019, with Equal Vision. But you’ve released a lot of singles, are you currently focusing on a new EP, new album? How has the writing been changing for you guys considering that EP is almost a year old?
AM: So the EP will be a year old January 19th I believe. And since then, we’ve actually written and recorded a whole new project. The first Young Culture full length ever. We’ve only done EP’s from here. We’re just really excited about it. It feels like something brand new. As much as it’s relatable to all the other music, it feels so new. I was explaining this earlier, but it feels like this new music is exactly what we set out to do with Young Culture in the first place. I feel like we executed it the way we wanted to so I’m very excited about it. Do you guys have anything to say?
TB: You killed it.
Considering it’s such a big thing to do that first full length record, are some of these songs older or were they written fresh for this record? Were you going into it, being like,this is for the album?
AM: Nah, a lot of them are older. We got a lot of old ones. Like the first two songs were written around the time that we were writing “This is Heaven”. There were a lot that came in like the final hour. There were probably two that were written in the last month before we went into the studio. They were probably two of my favorite ones. But I don’t think we ever went into it with the intention of we’reg to try and write this album. I think we just really wanted to write the best songs that we could and I knew that we wanted it to have a certain vibe. You’re going to see it, and it’s all like a thing. It’s awesome.
Then within these sets, have you been road-testing some new material or is it something where you’re keeping it a secret. Keeping it special?
GP: Yeah, we haven’t played any new songs yet. I think once 2020 rolls around, then we’re going to start pulling out the new songs live for the upcoming tours and stuff. But we’re just kind of rounding out the whole era of EP’s and all the songs that we’ve put out so far. Just kind of do a nice close on that and coming out heavy with the new songs.
Then we said it before but this mammoth of a tour is coming to an end on Saturday. I’m sure you’re excited to get a little rest.
AM: I mean, we are doing it, but there are definitely days like today where I’m like oh shit, I would love to sleep in my own bed. But I think we all have a lot of fun doing it.
TB: We’ve been gone for like a 100 days.
AM: Yeah, we’ve been gone for a really long time.
GP: Before this, we did the album. Before we recorded the album, we also did a tour with Rarity. Then did the whole album. Then did this whole tour. And this is like a seven week tour. So it’s been about a 100 days.
AM: August thru December.
I interviewed them on their summer headliner, so did you guys do that tour right after?
AM: Yeah, it was a little run.
TB: They had like a mammoth of a tour too.
They had a huge one too yeah. They’re super nice guys so I’m sure that wasn’t a hard tour to endure if you had some friends with you. Did you know them before?
GP: We’ve known them for a long time. Adam Clark, their guitarist, is actually our manager.
Oh really? Oh that’s awesome.
AM: Its cool. So we have a really close connection with them. Probably one of the first bands that we knew in the scene ever.
GP: They put us on in Canada. Brought us out there. Really helped us create a name for ourselves in Canada.
Then you have some big things coming up in 2020, that’s a huge thing, the first Young Culture album. But maybe focuses or goals for you over these next few months? Is it mainly getting that album out?
AM: After this tour, we’ve got some holiday shows. We’re doing one with Sleep On It in Chicago. We’re doing Keep Flying’s holiday show in Long Island then we’re actually doing two hometown shows, it’s State Champs’ holiday shows in Albany, back to back. It’s going to be really fun. Then after that, going to spend sometime with the family for the holidays. Then it’s just trying to get everything else together for this album, and make sure that’s executed properly. Get more tours, all that stuff. Keeping it going, making sure people don’t forget about us.