When you start a band and hit the road to tour, connections are everything. They are what help you not only get a gig, but stamp your group’s work into the cities and venues you play.
When you start a band and hit the road to tour, connections are everything. They are what help you not only get a gig, but stamp your group’s work into the cities and venues you play.
Over time these connections develop into friendships, and these friends (and fans) come back to watch you whenever you return to perform. For the Asheville, North Carolina trio Old Flings, these connections and friends have made Richmond a second home to them over the years.
We caught up with them before their performance at Strange Matter for Fall Line Fest earlier this month. The band, which consists of Matt Evans on vocals and guitar, Jordan Luff on bass and vocals, and Springs Wade on drums, have performed in Richmond several times since their inception in 2010.
“We’ve probably played here like ten times,” Evans said. “And that’s not an exaggeration.”
Over the span of these ten or so performances, Old Flings have shared the stage with a number of local bands like Teen Death, Family Cat, and Hold Tight!, a band they recently completed a Canadian tour with.
Old Flings is an eclectic mix of punk and power-pop. Imagine if Jawbreaker and Alkaline Trio had a lovechild with early-era Foo Fighters, and you might get a sense as to how they sound.
Their latest album, Spite, co-released by Bitter Melody Records and Self Aware Records in 2012, is chocked full of irresistible and hummable guitar riffs, in-your-face drums and moving bass lines that sit perfectly in the low end of the mix.
And on top of all of that lie Evans’ vocals, which can be smooth and tense in the same second, a combination of melancholy and hardcore-esque grit. This grit can be traced back to Evans’ and Luff’s time in the hardcore group Just Die!, but Evans believes there’s little difference between Just Die! and Old Flings in terms of energy.
“I still jam as hard as I did then,” he said. “We play it like it’s hardcore.”
Not only is the hardcore energy apparent, but there are brief flashes of metal breakdowns, something Luff feels the group has carried over from not only their experiences within the genre, but an appreciation of it as well.
“We definitely try to bring that perspective into what we do,” he said. “So while it is like power-pop or pop-punk or indie rock or whatever you wanna call it, it’s still derivative of our influences from metal and from hardcore.”
Given the number of influences the band credit to their sound, they have heard every comparison the music world can throw at them, but Luff and the rest of the group doesn’t seem to mind.
“Some girl in Savannah [Georgia] said we look like Metallica but play like Fall Out Boy,” Luff said. “What are you gonna do? People are gonna have their own personal comparisons. You just kinda have to deal with it.”
During their set at Fall Line Fest, the group was focused, never slowing down for a minute, save for the occasional guitar tuning and stage banter between songs. They cracked jokes with friends in the audience; they caught up with bands they had toured with before and introduced themselves to new ones.
It’s clear that Old Flings cares about the scene at large and enjoys what they do, taking their music seriously without taking themselves too seriously.
“We’ve definitely made a lot of friends along the way,” Luff said.
The band is taking it easy for the next several months, playing with punk rockers Against Me! October 6 at Capone’s in Johnson City, Tennessee, and then at Fest November 1 in Gainesville, Florida. The rest of their free time will be dedicated to recording their next full length album.
“We’re. . . writing a new [record] right now,” Evans said. “It should be awesome. We’re . . . talking to a label called Animal Style Records, they’re gonna help us with it.”
In the meantime, be sure to check out Old Flings’ awesome older material here, and head to their Tumblr for any upcoming announcements.
