Between The Buried And Me have been doing their thing for quite some time now - almost 20 years to be exact - and to celebrate, they've put together a special career-spanning set which will be making its way to Australia for three shows in February 2020. We caught up with the band's vocalist Tommy Giles Rogers Jr. to chat about touring Australia, what it's been like revisiting their oldest material and more! Scroll on for the interview:
Hey Tommy, thanks for chatting with us - it's now the sixth time BTBAM will be hitting Australia. Can you tell us what your favourite memory touring here would be?
6 times! I didn’t realise that! That’s a lot of long flights! My favourite memory? We were one of the few bands that got to experience Australia in a van. Most of the time you fly in, do 3 to 5 shows tops and then you leave. Our first tour there was with Bleeding Through and I believe, I Killed The Prom Queen? I can’t be sure, it was a long time ago. We played I think 14 shows so we got to see a lot of the country and the smaller towns, the seaside ones and the middle of nowhere too! It was a very good experience for us.
You've just finished up a run of European dates doing these special career-spanning shows. How have you found both being the only band performing and playing for two hours every night?
Being the only band, is amazing. Not to talk bad about any other band, but it was just so quiet backstage. Everything is on your terms, it was just us hanging out with ourselves and I think that re-connected us to each other too. Helped us grow a little closer after all these years.
The two hour thing? Going into it at first was a little scary. Firstly that it wouldn’t go over too well with the crowd and second that we wouldn’t like it or third, we couldn’t physically get through it. But it was great! It was a success. The fans were great and there was such a good vibe every night and even on the small shows people were just coming to see us since there was no one else. The sets represent where we’ve been and where we are now.
What has it been like revisiting old songs from 'Silent Circus' or your self-titled album, when your sound carried more of a raw metalcore vibe?
It's cool, it's in our DNA and it's definitely different. Physically it takes a little more, I have to really pace my voice in those songs cause they’re a bit more intense and I have to think about the newer songs and ‘singing’ a bit more. Our main goal for these sets was that they flow like an album and make sure that even though we are jumping from different versions of ourselves throughout the years that it all fits together and feels good. There’s cool segues and ways to make the songs work amongst each other.
Have you had any kind of epiphanies or moments of deep reflection about your musical career by playing music you wrote back in your early 20's?
Yeah definitely. For instance, and not to give you any spoilers or anything but on that Euro tour we played ‘More Of Myself To Kill’ which was on our demo. It was one of the first songs we ever wrote and I definitely get those moments where I remember Paul and I writing these riffs in our shitty apartment back in the day, before we had recording equipment and we would feed off each other and write and play them for hours and hours till we got it the song exactly how we liked. It’s cool to think about that stuff.
How has BTBAM managed to stay so cohesive and innovative with the same members for 15 years?
We genuinely still like writing music and like working with one another and we all have our own style and are evolving in our own way. When we get together all those puzzle pieces fit in together it creates something that is very unique and is the BTBAM sound. We feed off each other a lot and surprise each other with some of the things that we write. Its cool when you get excited by something that one of the other guys wrote and it opens up something in you that makes you more creative or start writing something off that that you never would’ve thought of otherwise. I really like writing with this band, I always have and we still surprise each other. We try to be genuine in the moment with what’s in us at that period of time instead of trying to predetermine what we are going to do.
Looking at your most recent 'evening with' setlists - and correct us if we're wrong - nothing from 'Automata I' makes it into the set. What was the decision behind that, and is it subject to change for the Australian shows?
We didn’t even notice that until it was pointed out to us! For us, Automata is ONE thing, we wrote and recorded both of those releases as one album, we don’t think of them as Automata 1 and Automata 2. We were just trying to create sets that had a really good flow and play some fan favourites that we don’t normally play too. As far as Australia, we haven’t sat down yet to discuss the exact set, we hope to do that very soon.
Do you have anything you'd like to say to your Aussie fans before we let you go?
We hope you come out! It’s a special show and a lot of work for us. Its only three shows too so hopefully if we’re not close to you, you’ll travel to see it. Its going to be a fun night and we have a kick ass sound guy coming with us so it will sound really good. We might not look good cause we will be tired, but I promise you we’ll play well!
Thank you for the interview.
Listen to Between The Buried And Me now.
