interview with Curb Stomp
Have any of you played in other bands? Yes, Macke and Kombi played in another project before. They were not satisfied and wanted to form another band, as they needed a guitarist and drummer, Simon and I were the exact matching other half and we formed Curb Stomp.
How is it that you started playing music? Most of us play their instruments for years but never really played in a band, which is probably the most fulfilling and fun part of playing music. When we all moved to Dortmund, there was the possibility to rent a rehearsal room and we were finally able to play in a band.
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you? Simon plays Drums, Kombi plays Bass, Macke is the singer and I (Benne) play the guitar and do backing vocals. We are between 24 and 28..
Did you make music even when you were young? As mentioned before, mostly by ourselves, although Simon played in small projects before. However, none of them was serious so Curb Stomp is our first serious project.
Where are you from? We all live in Dortmund, Germany.
What year did the band form?Curb Stomp was found in 2012
What's your style of genre? We play Oi! music, which is pretty similar to punk but a bit rougher.
What inspires you? Other bands, the subculture and important experiences in life.
How often and where do you reherse? We rented a room in an old WWII high-rise bunker, pretty cool location because we can make music 24/7. We usually rehearse on Wednesdays, so on a weekly basis.
How have you developed since you started with the music? We are trying to make our songs more melodic and thus less “simple”. This is a common procedure in the modern Oi! movement, the proof are modern bands like Lion’s Law or Grade 2.
Do you have other interests of work outside the band? We like going to football matches and having a drink.
Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? We would be happy if a booking agency wants to organize gigs in other countries than Germany.
Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? No we are not looking for a label as we are on Contra Records, a label that we wanted to be on because they have very good bands from all over the world signed and overall are very nice people.
What made you decide to make this music? Because we belong to the skinhead and Oi! subculture and although we listen to other genres like punk or Hardcore, Oi! is our favourite music so we wanted to play it as well.
What are your songs about? About the culture, having a drink and a fight, going to football, working men’s life and similar. Also, a common topic is the struggle with Nazis in our scene, as we think it is important to stand up against fascism and neonazis.
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? Me and Macke usually write the lyrics (most of them), we compose all together although the first framing is usually done by me.
Do you start with the music or the lyrics? In most cases we have lyrics and think about how we can arrange a song with them, only when I write a song it might happen that lyrics and music are done simultaneously.
Do you compose in a certain inviroment? In most cases in our rehearsal room or at home.
Have you done any covers live? We did “Watch your Back” by Cock Sparrer and we are currently working on a cover of the Old Firm Casuals
What language do you sing in?Our songs are in German
What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? We are happy with everyone who likes our music and attends our gigs, the only people that we don’t want to see there are fascists .
What ages are most of your concert attendants? Depends on the location and other bands that we play with, the skinhead scene is very far reaching when it comes to the age of its participants, many of them are older than we are.
Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? Sometimes, when we write a new song, we will put it in our live set. This does not happen all the time because we currently are “saving” songs for our album and don’t want to play them too early.
Do you have a regular place you play live often? We played in the “Südrock” in Essen twice, which is very close to our hometown. Concerts there are often organized by our friend Max, who recently asked us to play there with Rude Pride, we are looking forward to that.
What was your first gig like? Awesome, our friend Pedro asked us to play with Mr. Symarip and we were very excited about that. The show turned out to be great and many gigs followed.
What was your latest gig? Our last gig was in Switzerland and it was a great experience.
Have you had to cancel a gig? Unfortunately yes. Our singer Macke had serious health issues and thus we had to cancel a few gigs. We decided that in the future I will take care of those gigs and sing them but we hope that he settled and won’t be unable to sing.
Where have you played live this year? Don’t remember all of our gigs but Dresden and Switzerland for example.
Where do you plan to gig the comming year? We hope that we can play abroad and already made plans to play in Russia and Italy.
When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? We started selling merchandise pretty early, at the beginning, Simon printed our first shirts by hand but later no we oredered more shirts and other merchandise and no longer produce it by ourself. Besides Tshirts we have Buttons, patches, stickers and vinyl EPs to sell.
Where can people buy your merchandise? At www.curbstompdortmund.bandcamp.com/merch
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records nowadays? That is a hard question. We live in a time where media is easy to access and artists can’t deny that it usually helps a band to become more famous. We hope that if people download our music and still attend a gig, they might buy a record after to support us, it is not that expensive haha. However, if people can’t afford buying music but still support the scene by attending gigs and similar, it is probably allright if they download it.
What do you think of my work? We always appreciate if someone does that much work for the scene, it helps a lot!
Do you have any role models or idols? We obviously have bands that we love and luckily we were able to play with many of them. They are not idols but very inspiring when it comes to making music. A few examples would be Lion’s Law, Grade 2, Stomper 98, Evil Conduct and many more.
Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? Both of them did much for the scene, older bands paved the way but especially newer bands improve the music and are thus very inspiring for us. Their style is often very refreshing and modern.
What advice would you give other bands or artists? Do your very best and have fun doing it!
How do you get psyched for a gig? We usually have the one or the other drink before a gig haha.
Do you have any new material? We are going to release our second EP “Für Immer” pretty soon. We therefore did a new music video which will be awesome.
What are your web sites?
www.curbstompdortmund.bandcamp.com
www.youtube.com/user/curbstompdortmund
How can people reach you? Via Facebook or Email: [email protected]
What are your plans for the future? Releasing an LP and playing abroad with many cool bands.