Ten months ago, Boston’s Defeater were playing to only a handful of familiar people, while opening for Polar Bear Club. This time round, though, they have returned to a sold out headline show in Leeds, and Faye caught up with them for yet another lengthy chat. Here’s how it went down…
Faye: Can you say your name and what you do?
Jay: I’m Jay, I play guitar so hard that I get blood all over my guitar.
Mike: I’m Mike, I play bass.
Jake: I’m Jake, I play guitar.
Derek: I’m Derek, I sing.
Andy: I’m Andy, I play the drums.
Faye: You were last over in June, what have you been up to since?
Mike: Well, right after the UK tour with Polar Bear Club and Ruiner, we started a European tour with Comeback Kid. Then after that, we got home and recorded, and put out Lost Ground. We did a few short US tours, we haven’t done a full US tour since then, though.
Derek: We did a short east coast tour for The Fest, which was incredible, then the west coast with All Teeth, which again was amazing, and then we did a tour a couple of weeks ago and South By South West, kind of just by ourselves, we met up with a few friends here and there, then a couple of weeks later, we got on a plane to do this.
Faye: You recently played Groezrock and there was an issue with some dude coming up to you on stage, what happened there?
Derek: This guy got on stage during like the first song, and kids were going crazy, stage-diving, it was the biggest crowd we’ve ever played to and I don’t even know the numbers, it looked like a 1000 people, it was fucking crazy, or more. I don’t even know how to calculate that, it was just overwhelming. We were all having fun playing and kids were going crazy, stage-diving their asses off, and this guy got up on stage and grabbed me. He screamed in my ear, and what I heard him say was, “You need to let people sing more.” And he was this big dude, and kind of pushed himself off me and stage-dived, and I was like, “Ehhh…” So, we finished the song, we kind of kept going, and then I keep singing, and seem him in the crowd keep flipping me off or holding an imaginary mic to his face, and I was so scared that he was going to come back on stage and beat me up, he had a few inches on me and definitely a lot of pounds on me. Then he turned out to be the nicest guy in the world, because he came over afterwards and I was like, “I don’t know what I did to make you upset.” and he was like, “You didn’t make me upset, I just wanted you to sing more. I love Defeater! I love your albums! You weren’t singing enough, no one could here you, the crowd was singing for you.” But that’s pretty much what happened there, I got really scared.
Faye: Didn’t you forget to bring your inhaler on stage too?
Derek: Yeah, I didn’t bring my inhaler on stage and I made Mike, our driver, to run back and grab my jacket, because I thought it was in my pocket, but it wasn’t. So, I didn’t have any wind for basically the whole set, so we cut a song or two in the set. I felt like an asshole, but we played for 10-minutes shorter than we should have maybe. Basically, I ruined Groezrock for everyone. [laughs] Shitty set. Then when we did that ‘encore’, that was pretty cool, because immediately when we went off stage, everything started to buzz again. We played, we had a lot of fun, we met a lot of really nice people, we saw Strike Anywhere, saw a bunch of bands we always wanted to see. Mike got to see Millencolin, 16-year-old Mike Poulin was fucking pumped.
Posted by changetherecord 
Click the link below to check out photos of Pennywise‘s very intimate show at the Academy 2 in Newcastle, with support from A Wilhelm Scream and Strike Anywhere. For a review of the gig, click 
