Nevermind The Posers

By Angela Blasi

I had a few minutes to catch up with Ian Cook and Jesse Marshall of Larry and his Flask Vans Warped Tour in Oceanport, NJ.  Check out their new album All That We Know that just came out on Tuesday 8/9/11.

Ang:  How was your performance today and the turnout?

Ian:  It was cool, we’re kind of one of those bands; we’ll start out with a small gathering of people and by the end, people walk by and they’re like “what?”  They see this guy jumping around with this huge standup bass, and there are banjos and mandolins, so they stop and want to watch.

Jesse:  Today a lot of parents came up to us and said “Thank you so much, I hate all the music on this tour, I’m in pain being here.”

Ang:  How long have you guys been together?

Ian:  It’s kind of a weird story.  We’ve been together for seven years and started out as just a straight up electric punk rock band and it kind of evolved.  In the last three and a half years, we’ve been playing more traditional instruments, more like a full gear sound.

Ang:  How’s New Jersey been treatin’ ya?

Jesse:  The Saint in Asbury Park was awesome and we played The Wellmont Theatre in Montclair with Dropkick Murphys; it was really great.

Ang:  Are there any bands your fond of touring with?  Any bands here you’ve hit it off with?

Ian:  Foxy Shazam.  They’re off the tour now and left at the Montreal date.  They were amazing.  We made really great friends with them, nicest guys.

Jesse:  We bonded immediately.  Our van broke down in Michigan and they let us ride in their tour bus, they’re great guys. Also, the Aggrolites are awesome.  We’re definitely going to be playing with them in the future.  We’ll be touring with Lionize in the fall.

Ang:  For someone who’s not familiar with your music/stage show, what is something the new-comers can expect?

Ian:  I would just say come prepared to have a party.

Jesse:  It’s an explosion of energy.

Ian:  We just try to play at every show like it’s the last one we’re going to play; give it everything and see if we get anything back.  If we get twenty percent back from what we’re giving out, then we’re happy.

Ang:  As far as your music and song writing goes, is that something done collectively as a band?

Ian:  It’s different from time to time.  Most often one person will bring the song to the table and it’ll change drastically once we get it into the practice space and start hashing out things.

Jesse:  There are also things we’ve written completely collectively, the lyrics and the music, but a lot of times one person will write the lyrics, bare-bone skeleton of the song and then we’ll all go in and add.  Maybe a horn pop would be cool here.

Ian:  Kind of throw it around.

Ang:  Do you guys have a method in getting together and writing, or do you find that your influences have any sort of bearing when you get together and write?

Ian:  Yeah, definitely.  Me personally, I write a lot of songs by myself just with my acoustic guitar and definitely my influences have an effect.

Ang:  Same for you Jesse, is there a particular kind of music that brings out a flare to the music?

Jesse:  I don’t know, punk rock and gypsy music; a lot jazz.

Ian:  We listen to a lot of music.  We’re huge fans of music in general from metal to hip-hop to jazz.

Ang:  Are you on for the entire duration of the Warped Tour?

Jesse:  The tour ends in Portland, which is like two hours from my house.

Ang:  Aren’t you guys from Oregon?  That worked out well.

Jesse:  Yeah.  Everybody else is like ‘I have to drive back to New Jersey.’  Luckily, we go home, do a couple of shows and a couple of festivals.  We do a festival in Seattle called Soundfest, a couple of home-town shows, then we go to play Riot Fest in Philly and Chicago and FEST 10 in Florida.  Finally, we do a full US/Canada tour, go home for a little bit, then we go to Hawaii

Ang:  Sounds like you’re always touring, how are you physically enduring all the traveling?

Ian:  It’s how we all grew up.  We started touring while still in high school and we got used to it more and more.  The first time we went out, we were out for two weeks and played like four shows.  Then it got bigger and bigger and we got used to living on the road.

Jesse:  Luckily we’re all younger, our twenties and stuff.  None of us have any kids.

Ian:  None of us have any ties at home other than girlfriends.  We kind of built our lives around the band.

Ang:  What’s your favorite area to play?

Ian:  I like Florida a lot.

Jesse:  I really like Colorado and it’s always fun to go to the city- New York or San Francisco.

Ang:  It seems like you guys have been everywhere.

Jesse:  Yeah, we’ve played in 44 states.  We haven’t done North Dakota, Alabama, Hawaii or Alaska.  We are playing Hawaii and Alaska coming up soon.

Ang:  Anything else you’d like our readers to know?

Ian:  We just released a brand new album.  It’s called All That We Know.  It’s available digitally now on Amazon and iTunes and released in stores on 8/9/11.

Ang:  Finally, what is your definition of a poser?

Ian:  Somebody that’s lost in any sort of false idea of what should be true.  Somebody who should be following their heart and they’re not.

Jesse:  Kind of just pretentious, trying too hard to fit in I suppose.