Just putting up the interview I conducted with frontman Joey Medina from LA's Brit-Pop influenced rock group, The Tenderbox. Enjoy :)
Interview with Joey Medina of “The Tenderbox”: Conducted on July 23rd, 2009
Joey Medina
Laurel: Hey, how’s it going?
Joey: It’s going well.
Laurel: Thanks so much for letting me do this interview with you guys.
Joey: Oh, thanks for having us.
Laurel: So how have things been, have you guys played any shows recently?
Joey: The last show we did was in Los Angeles at the Viper Room and that was a really good show. It was actually a record release party.
Laurel: Awesome. So you guys have played with David J. from Bauhaus and Love & Rockets, you’ve been hanging out at bars with the Libertines from what I hear, and touring with the Goo Goo Dolls. Has there been a sort of point for you where you’re able to say, “We’re becoming this really successful band?” Was there just a moment where it hit you?
Joey: I think each time we get the opportunity to play with bands, ya know like Goo Goo Dolls or anything…It’s always a treat to be with a musician that follows music. It’s always a great experience and ya know, every time we get the opportunity again it’s like, “Wow… I didn’t think would happen!!”
It’s always exciting. I don’t think we consider ourselves…like….we’ve made it…*laughs*
Laurel: Well, you’re getting there. You’re obviously on the incline.
Joey: I think we’re just privileged that we’ve had the experience and we’re definitely hoping we can have many more.
Laurel: So if you could pick just a certain number of artists, who are some dream bands that you’d like to love to tour with , that you just really admire?
Joey: I mean, the list just goes on and on. There’s a lot of bands and each one of us probably has our own favorites. It’d be great to tour with like, ya know, Primal Scream...
I mean me personally I would like to open up for Jeff Lynne from E.L.O. *laughs*
Laurel: *laughs* Nice. And your Dad was actually a musician, right?
Joey: That’s right.
Laurel: Do you have a lot of memories of that growing up and do you think that sort of influenced you with what you want to do or not at all really?
Joey: I mean, I definitely think it has some part to do with it. I do remember being really young and showing up at some of his shows and ya know, just being like, at back-area parties and like, renting a hall with just a bunch of bands playing. I just remember being really young. It’s kind of vague but I do kind of remember that.
The thing is, somehow I absorbed it in some way and I eventually started playing my own music.
Playing for a full house in Aberdeen in the UK
Laurel: Does he still play shows today?
Joey: *laughs* No…he’s pretty much like, the family man now. I mean, every now and then when we have like, drunken sessions we tend to jam out with each other.
Laurel: That's really cool. You guys were interviewed on The Drop and you said as far as the Tenderbox goes, you’re not musicians. You’re just guys who picked up instruments at different times in High School and wanted to make music. So when would you consider yourself a musician, if at all?
Joey: Well I mean, I think we could be defined as musicians but we didn’t really study it. We weren’t educated with it just. Basically I think the drive came from who we listened to back in school and who we wanted to cover songs of and then we just started developing our own sound.
Laurel: And you've been officially known as the Tenderbox for what, 5 years now? Before that, you weren’t with a hammered down label or anything or as established…
Joey: Well it’s probably going more on 4 years actually. Yeah we’ve been friends since we were young. And ya know, like I said we decided to just pick up instruments and just jam out with each other. And we’ve been doing it ever since really.
Laurel: I’ve been trying to watch all of the interviews of you guys on Youtube so far and I heard a story about Rick & Steve being tossed in jail in England. Is that as crazy as the tour stories go or are there any other ones?
Joey: I’m sure there are a lot of them. They probably wouldn’t be worth telling though because they probably wouldn’t mean much to anybody else.
Laurel: With EP1 how has the fan response been so far at recent shows? Have you been playing just a select few or all 5 tracks from it?
Joey: Well, we’ve been doing just a few because we just released the EP. It’s a two-part EP and we did the first release back in…I think it was in July. And we’re going to be releasing the next one probably in a couple months. We’re still writing a few songs for the EP release. In the next months though, we’re going to be going on tour. We’re going to be going down to the East Coast and we have Canada shows. And hopefully after that if everything goes well.
Laurel: Do you guys know when you’ll be hitting the East Coast? Sometime in the Fall maybe?
Joey: It’s going to be the end of September and part of early October.
Laurel: Awesome. I mean I booked about 7 bands last year to play here and we love finding new names to book. We love having bands coming to our campus.
Joey: Well if it works for the tour I mean, we’d be honored to do it.
Laurel: Yeah it’s a pretty small school. There’s only about 1500 or so students that go here but we did have some mosh-pits last year which was pretty surprising. It’s a pretty small campus though.
Joey: That’s cool.
Medina live on stage at the Carson Daly Show
Laurel: So this coming Saturday though, you guys are playing at Silver Factory Studios and it’s like a 24-hour non-stop concert?
Joey: Right. It starts on Friday and we’ll see who’s still alive on Sunday. *laughs*
Laurel: Are you guys going to try and stay up all night and catch all the bands you’re sandwiched between or are you going to try and sleep?
Joey: We’d love to stay up because a lot of the bands that are playing are our friends and it’s just that you know…I mean it’s definitely going to be an event since we have some friends that are playing like, in the afternoon, some in the early morning, like at 4am.
Laurel: Yeah you guys are set to go on at 1am from what I saw on your Myspace.
Joey: Yeah that’s when we go on. It’s just cool cuz it’s a club that usually everybody hits. With just stuff that’s still going on at 6 or 7 in the morning.
Laurel: Yeah I wish they did stuff like that in Philly. We only have a few small venues here but it would be so awesome to have 24-hour things like that going on. I haven’t ever heard of shows like that. I was…intrigued when I saw that on your Myspace.
Joey: Well that’s because its Los Angeles. *laughs* How’s the weather doing there by the way?
Laurel: It’s pretty rainy actually. It’s been in like, the 70’s this week. We had a few days last week where it was in the 90s. I mean, September, it’ll be nice. It should be around there in the 70s or so. Hopefully it’ll be sunny for you guys. We’ve been getting a ton of rain lately. We get a lot of it in PA. Hopefully it’ll be nice I mean, I’m not sure if you guys are doing outdoor stuff or not…
Joey: As far as I know it’s indoors.
Laurel: Do you know what venue you’d like to play?
Joey: Nothing’s confirmed yet…so I don’t want to curse it. We talked to people yesterday and seems like it’s going to happen. We’ll release it. You’ll see the information on our Myspace and on our website.
Laurel: Yeah I mean, I’ve been listening to the EP a lot. I like Gravity a lot I think it’s got a great ballad-y feel to it. It’s a great track.
Joey: Oh thank you.
Laurel: So you’ve played in Canada and the UK. Did you guys get to do any sight-seeing when you were out of the states?
Joey: We did but honestly not a lot. Ya know, a lot of it had to be just driving through an exit. We did touch a couple. We did touch a lot of pubs but it was mostly people we’d meet at the shows and they’d come and invite us to ya know, the afterhours stuff. That was really cool and people treated us really well. I’m hoping that can happen again with this next tour. We just want to see as much as possible and meet as many people as possible and just….experience it.
Laurel: You grew up listening to a lot of Brit-Pop and Classic Rock and 80’s from what I’ve read. Are there any songs you guys would really just love to cover by bands you grew up listening to?
Joey: We probably already have. *laughs*
That’s how we started. That was our gig. We’d get hired for parties just playing covers. That’s actually how we made most of our money just on our recording sessions and we haven’t done that in a long time ya know, but it definitely paid well.
Laurel: Did you do a lot of basement shows?
Joey: Yeah. I mean the more shows you put on the more they want you to keep playing and we’d just say ok well it’s another $100 so we were basically whoring ourselves out like that for a while. *laughs*
Laurel: Alright well thank you so much for letting me interview you. I’ll send a link to Jason from Musebox when it’s put up on radio station blog.
Joey: Alright well you have a good night, thank you so much.
Laurel: Have a good night, thanks Joey.
Joey: Talk to you later.
The Tenderbox will be touring in the area in late September/early October and their most recent EP, "EP1" (part of a set of 2 that will be released since their debut album "The Score" dropped in 2006), is available here:
Click to Download "EP1"
and you can find them on The Tenderbox Website
or on Myspace at: Tenderbox Myspace
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