Interview: Hold Tight!

Our Band of the Moment from last week, Hold Tight!, chit chatted with us about their upcoming tour, being constantly compared to Lifetime, and gave us some insight as to what their new EP is going to sound like. Check out the interview below.

Where are you from and what kind of music do you make?

We are from Richmond, VA and play (to be vague) pop-punk. We get described a lot as mixes of Lifetime, Blink-182, and Latterman. I don’t know, but I’ll take that compliment.



RVA has always had a strong punk/hardcore presence. What about the area do you think is responsible for this?

I obviously can’t speak for Richmond’s scene 20 years ago. I guess the college (VCU) is responsible. What I see a lot of today is that most kids with any interest in any sort of counter-culture decide to move here when they graduate high-school - so, lots of bands start, then these kids want to move here, then they start bands themselves, etc. It’s a seemingly endless cycle. In the end, we have a pretty small city (200,000 people) jam-packed with a ton of interesting and motivated people.



You’re credited a lot for playing Lifetime inspired melodic punk, but what RVA band do you think you resemble the most?

I can’t really think of one that’s accurate, really. There’s a lot of great bands from here that we listen to (and thus, influence us) but I don’t think we sound a lot like any particular (bigger) band from here. I’d say Strike Anywhere probably influences us the most - but, like I said, I don’t think we sound like Strike Anywhere.



Do the Lifetime comparisons ever get old? I know Shook Ones used to get a lot of crap for sounding like Kid Dynamite and I can only imagine how annoying that must get despite how great the band is.

Not really, haha. We all love Lifetime a lot and they definitely influence us a ton, even though I don’t think we sound like Lifetime by the book. Maybe we do, I don’t really know. For someone who has never heard us, I feel like it’s probably the most accurate “popular” band comparison.

Do you ever cover Lifetime live?

We’ve covered “Young, Loud, And Scotty” a few times. We actually cover Blink-182 songs a lot more frequently. It’s always fun to cover songs that you can count on everyone in the room our age having grown up on - Blink, Green Day, Weezer, etc.



Hold Tight! has self-released a couple of EPs and the full length Can’t Take This Away in 2010. Would you say being a DIY band is harder today or 20-30 years ago?

Well, this is all speculation since I was only 1 twenty years ago, haha. I’d guess that it’s probably easier - at least in most ways. The internet makes it really easy to book a tour and to get your music out to new people. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone from New Orleans but we have a show booked there this summer - all I had to do was e-mail one guy who knew a guy who knew a guy. The only thing that’s more difficult is, probably due to the pros listed above, that there are so many bands releasing albums and going on tours. Anyone with a few hundred bucks can record a decent sounding demo and hop in a van for the weekend.



What about it is still hard?

I guess I touched on it above, but being a relatively unknown band trying to get a good show in a major city is always difficult. Even for Richmond, which is way smaller than most cities, there are multiple shows with touring bands every single night. Obviously people can’t go to a show every night. So, if we go play Chicago or something, there were probably 20 awesome shows for more well-known bands that week - it’s hard to get people to choose your show over others.



Can’t Take This Away is available on your bandcamp for a donation. How is this model working for you guys? Do you find you’re making enough to release another album or are you going to have to put a lot more cash towards it?

It has worked out great for us. I think it’s awesome. Like I said, every band who has played three shows has some kind of music recorded, and if every band was to charge for their releases, very few people would buy your shit and spread the word about your band (early on, at least). All we did was throw our album up on a free website and we now have someone in California releasing it on vinyl. Tours have gotten way easier to book. As far as donations, we’ve made a surprisingly good amount. The majority of people definitely download it for free (which is fine by us) and we haven’t made enough to fully finance a new album, but everything helps. We plan on releasing our future albums online for donation as well.

You guys are shipping off pretty soon to embark on a pretty serious summer tour with Timeshares, Sundials, and With This is Your Life. What can we expect if we catch you on the tour?

Most of us will probably have been drunk since six hours before the show. We will play some new songs. We will want to talk to you and/or throw a Vortex around with you after we play. After convincing you we are friendly, we will beg you to let us stay at your house so we can watch movies with you really late even though you have work in the morning.



The tour makes stops in 18 states. What do you do to keep busy from city to city?

We talk about weird shit, sing Ke$ha songs, and stop for food as often as possible. When we get to whatever city we are playing in, we usually get more food then go hang out somewhere. I usually will try and convince the straight edge half of the band to go to a bar with me, which doesn’t usually work. So I either wind up at one alone or we find somewhere fun to hang out in the city. Everything cool to do is one Google search away…



What will be playing in the van?

We almost exclusively listen to top 40 radio on tour. We’ll also probably play the new Spraynard album a bunch.



When can we hear some new material? I heard there was an EP in the works.

We are recording a 7 song EP this Sunday (May 29th). As soon as it’s mixed/mastered we will put it up on Bandcamp. I think our friends are pressing it on tape and we’re hoping someone will want to release it on 7 inch.



Could you describe what they’ll sound like a little bit?

Basically, we have a shit ton of really short songs that we really like, but kind of decided that too many super short songs on a full length is weird. Like, the demos we have right now put the whole 7 song EP at less than 6 minutes. I’d say it sounds a little more like Kid Dynamite, but it’s still really poppy. You’ll see in a couple weeks I guess!

Give them a listen and then head over to their bandcamp to pick up their full length Can’t Take This Away for a donation. Both EPs can be downloaded for free from their Facebook page.

