by Adelie Salagnac
photos by CJ Harvey
Brooklyn-base garage band The Teen Age has played many many shows and shared stages with names such as Twin Peaks, Palma Violets or The Virgins. Twenty-something talented musicians reminiscing their younger teenage years, The Teen Age has come a long way since forming in 2012.
“Being in a band, and being in the music scene,” says Bill Dvorak, “especially like the one in Brooklyn, has you acting maybe a little bit younger than you are. You are frequently going out and hanging out at the bar. It is sort of the lifestyle that comes with touring. Our music deals a little bit with getting over some of your internal demons, trying to find the path to maturity, letting go of that wild-spirit attitude that got you into playing music in the first place.”
Part of growing up is looking back on the past and learning from your experiences. Dvorak and his band mates obviously have a lot of tour stories to learn from. Here is the advice he would give to his younger self:
“Stick out to the music thing,” he says, “and do not let it get you down when it occasionally gets difficult, or when things are not doing well when you play a show to a tiny amount of people. Because it is just sort of the way it goes when you start out as a band. But at the end of the day, it’s going to be rewarding no matter what happened, it will be a great experience to look back on.”
Dvorak also admits the rock n’ roll life is not always as glamorous as it may look like from the outside.
“There is nothing that stands out as horrible or anything,” he explains, “but when you start out as a band, when you are on the road, when you are touring, you are driving for hours and hours, money is always a little bit of an issue depending on how much you made the night before, you are not necessarily sure what you are doing at the next show because it is a town you have never been to before, and you do not know who is coming out. There is a lot of, not really apprehension, but fear of the unknown. You are not sure what is going to happen, you just kind of have to power through it and do your best, trying to have as much fun as possible.”
Always on the road, The Teen Age years are coming to visit us in Philadelphia on February 20th at Boot & Saddle, with PALMAS.
“We would like to come back as much as possible!” Dvorak says. “We have already played there a couple of times, and we have a lot of friends there. It’s sort of like a sister city to New York, and we always have fun.”
The Teen Age are inviting you, to rediscover your youth, even for a couple of hours. Always putting on high-energy shows, Dvorak and his band mates promise a brand new and exciting set.
“My favorite song to play live is probably currently “Backwards”, which is our most recent single and which we are really excited about,” Dvorak shares. “There are a couple of songs off our new EP that we haven’t played yet and I think we are all pretty psyched to play them. One of them is called “Glade Dreams” and the other is called “Liquor Store”.”
Putting out their forthcoming EP, Bad Seed, on March 4th, via PaperCup Music, The Teen Age are delivering their most well thought-through and mature release so far, written as ‘an ode to getting older, confronting the inevitable truths that you have spent your youth avoiding.’
“We sort of wrote a whole bunch of songs this time and really narrowed it down to the four that we thought were the strongest,” explains Dvorak. “We captured a little more strength that way. We definitely experimented around, with different harmonies, layering different guitars, stuff like that. Our producer Jason Finkel is really excellent and started giving us a very thorough, but still garage-y sound. We worked with him to get the best piece of work that we could. He just really gets our sound. He realizes that we are a garage band, so we want to sound a little bit greedy, but at the same time we write these pop songs that have really pronounced hooks. He is able to bring out those hooks and at the same time give the songs that rock feeling that we want. He knows the best of both worlds and that works very well for us.”
Talented and multi-faceted, Dvorak does not only show great musicianship, he also showcases his artistic side, through Young Heart Productions, a production company specializing in music videos and formed with his band mate Micah Weisberg. An overall very enhancing experience he passionately talks about:
“It is definitely interesting to be on the other side of things,” Dvorak says, “to see how different bands function as a unit; it is usually going to be different than with your own band mates. For some, the work process and the communication are much smoother; others sort of have a designated leader and everyone pretty much just do what they say. Overall, doing music videos for bands that are on the same level as ours is pretty rewarding, because we are making new friends, so now we have more people to potentially collaborate and play shows with. Coming up with video ideas regularly has led us to be more creative in our own videos.”
Tickets are available at http://www.bootandsaddlephilly.com/event/1053453-palmas-philadelphia/
Please note this event is 21+
