By Amahli Vivian
Last week, I interviewed the San Francisco based emocore band Junipero. We chatted about music influences, band name origins, upcoming music plans, the live music scene in the Bay Area + San Francisco, and what defines emo and screamo as a genre.
Junipero is: Becket (bass), Gabe (drums), Gavin (vocals), Maxine (guitar), Sean (guitar).
Interview Audio:
Interview transcript:
Amahli: Nice. How would you describe your Junipero sound-wise?
Gabe: probably a mix between skramz and a little bit of emo, emoviolence. With like, some hardcore mixed in there.
Maxine: Yeah, we kinda just say emocore, because it’s kind of broad and there’s not a specific word that describes our sound, I feel. Kind of all over the place.
Amahli: I noticed you guys used “emocore,” which is kind of cool. I feel like a lot of newer bands don’t really reclaim that label anymore.
Gabe: It was just that we didn’t really know what to call it anymore because we all have very different influences so it’s kind of the collaboration of all our different influences to make our sound.
Sean: I feel like emocore is probably the closest to it. You could say maybe skramz I guess, or screamo.
Maxine: That term is kind of overplayed.
Sean: Skramz or screamo?
Maxine: Skramz.
Sean: Yeah, that one’s a tricky one. Like, is it screamo? Post-rock? Post-hardcore?
Becket: A lot of people don’t like the term “skramz” at all. A lot of people think it’s corny or doesn’t even make sense, which I can kind of get that criticism a lot. So now it’s kind of backwards.
Maxine: Well, that’s why the term skramz exists, because people thought the term “screamo” was corny so they started calling it “skramz.” And now it’s backwards.
Sean: What about, like Orchid? What’s Orchid?
Gavin: Skramz.
Amahli: Are they emoviolence or skramz?
Maxine: Emoviolence, yeah
Gavin and Sean: They’re skramz.
Maxine: I don’t even know what they call themselves.
Gavin: I think they label themselves as skramz.
Sean: Probably called themselves hardcore.
Amahli: What’s your process for making a song?
Gabe: Uh, difficult. Like I said, we all have very different influences sometimes. They’ll [Maxine] come in with guitar parts, say. And then I’ll, I’ll come up with, like, a drum part and I’m like, I don’t think the drum part goes with the guitar part. But I don’t know, we kind of just go into the studio and bang our heads against the wall until stuff happens. Yeah, that’s what that’s what I would call it.
Sean: It’s a long process for sure.
Gavin: But recently, I feel like we’ve just been, like, kind of pumping stuff out because we’ve been playing, like, a lot of shows. We’ve been just trying to expand our setlist for the most part.
Amahli: I saw you guys are going to play in Oakland soonish. I really want to catch you guys there.
Maxine: That’d be sick.
Sean: Yeah, that’d be rad.
Maxine: I think we’re also trying to set up a show at Subrosa, because we’re having some difficulties with our San Jose show. So you’re trying to rebook it.
Amahli: Yes! Come to Subrosa, there needs to be more shows there. Are you guys working on anything right now? I know you put out a demo a few months ago.
Sean: Yeah! We’re finishing up an EP right now, actually. We’re just about done.
Maxine: Should be out in a couple weeks, right?
Becket: I think I could get it done sooner than a couple weeks. Actually this morning I’ve been doing a lot of mixing on it. It’s sounding fantastic.
Amahli: What sounds or musical influences were you pulling from?
Gabe: We have our band playlist that we made. I think that’s kind of what we use. I don’t know if you guys use that, I still use that.
Becket: I use it.
Sean: Yeah, yeah.
Gavin: Yeah I do.
Sean: Daitro from France.
Maxine: A lot of Funeral Diner.
Sean: A lot of Funeral Diner for sure. A lot of Joshua Fit For Battle.
*this is where I accidentally get disconnected from the call*
Amahli: Sorry about that.
Maxine: You disconnected there.
Amahli: Yeah my hotspot dropped. But I was saying I could hear a lot of Joshua Fit For Battle and Spirit of Versaille in the stuff you guys released. It’s really solid. Where, or how did you guys form as a band?
Gavin: Instagram.
Gabe: At first, it was me, Maxine, and Gavin. I think Gavin and Maxine had met first. I don’t really know how you guys met. How’d you guys meet?
Maxine: Gavin made an Instagram post on his story asking people if they wanted to be in a band or something and then my ex-girlfriend sent it to me. And then I started following Gavin and then we started talking. We eventually met up and then me and Gabe went to his house and we jammed.
Gabe: I’m Maxine’s roommate by the way. We’ve known each other for maybe a year now through mutual friends. So then, we went over to Gavin’s house, started jamming together, and it was just kind of wrote two songs until we’re like, “okay, maybe we should get, like a bassist.” So we put up, we made fliers. We made this silly flier.
Maxine: Well, we asked around for a minute trying to find a bassist, and it was kind of hard. So we just put out fliers on our campus.
Gabe: And that’s how we found Becket. Becket found our flier.
Maxine: Yeah. He wrote a really nice message.
Gabe: It was very professional.
Amahli: I always feel like bassists and drummers are always the hardest to find.
Sean: Oh yeah.
Gabe: There’s the joke that every drummer is in like, five bands, which is almost true for me. Then Sean joined later on after we had played our first 2 or 3 shows because I wanted a more dynamic rhythm section.
Maxine: Well, I think we all wanted changes in the band because we were kind of coming to a standstill almost with how things were going. So we wanted to throw in some other guitarists to mix things up.
Sean: I was in a band already with Gabe and then they asked me if I wanted to play guitar and I was like, “yeah.” That’s how that worked.
Amahli: Is your name a reference to Junipero Serra?
Everyone else: Yes.
Amahli: Okay, I was wondering this.
Maxine: That was going to be our name, but he was um…
Gabe: He was not a good dude.
Maxine: Yeah, not a great person historically so, yeah.
Gabe: So it’s more just a reference to the street, I guess. That’s right there next to SF State.
Amahli: Okay, nice. Do you think that being in SF impacts your band’s sound or how you interact with the scene there.
Gabe: Definitely. We cover a song by I Hate Sex. It’s called “San Francisco.”
Amahli: I love I Hate Sex. They’re one of my favorite bands.
Gabe: It definitely influences us.
Maxine: Also our practice space in the city is in a really crazy area. And it’s like this tiny little room in a giant building. It’s super sketchy. We play like, 400 a month for it between all of us.
Amahli: Okay…that’s not horrible.
Gabe: I actually kind of like it.
Sean: And it’s nice for what it is.
Amahli: A space is a space.
Gabe: But every time you have to walk the two blocks from the bus stop that we take, once you get in the building, you take a calm sigh of relief.
Maxine: The streets are crazy.
Gabe: It’s just insane. The whole mess you have to walk through just to get there is pretty gnarly.
Amahli: What district is it in?
Gabe: It’s in the Tenderloin. It’s just kind of like Skid Row.
Maxine: It’s in the worst part of the Tenderloin, the worst three blocks.
Sean: Yeah, it’s in the heart of it. Hyde and Turk right? The intersections are definitely the most active section of the Tenderloin, but it’s a cool spot.
Gabe: We’re just lucky we found it too, honestly. I mean, we were practicing in Gavin’s room before that and we got a noise complaint at four months in when we thought we were completely fine playing at his house. And we had shows coming up too, we had a show coming up and had to have an emergency practice at me and Maxine’s house.
Gavin: Oh, yeah.
Gabe: That was fun. But we made it work. We found a studio.
Amahli: How do you prepare for live shows?
Sean: Rehearsal.
Maxine: Usually before shows we try to run the setlist down.
Sean: If it’s possible.
Gabe: On stage, we’ll noise check with the song that we feel we might know the least to usually refresh our memory. Or, I try to practice that. I’ll try to get everyone else to do it.
Amahli: Nice. When was your guys’ last show?
Sean and Gavin: Yesterday.
Maxine: That one was crazy.
Gabe: Technically yesterday.
Amahli: Was it a secret set?
Sean: Kinda. It was under a fake name due to the radius clause. So we played in a Junipero cover band where we covered every single song from the set under a different name with all the same members. So technically not the same band.
Amahli: (laughs) That reminds me of a time when Knumears played a few songs at Subrosa with Bloom Dream and Shortstop. But I didn’t know it was them because I didn’t know what they looked like. When they were playing “Bridged”, I was like “Oh, they sound a lot like Knumears, this is a really good cover.” But then I just found out that it was the actual band playing.
Maxine: That’s funny.
Amahli: Are there any specific venues you guys like playing at?
Sean: There’s venues I don’t like playing at.
Maxine: Yeah, we hate Thrillhouse [Records in SF].
Gabe: Thrillhouse is not fun.
Sean: It smells like poop and you hit your head on everything in there.
Sean: We’re all tall. Everybody in this band is pretty tall.
Gavin: Except me. That’s why I don’t hate Thrillhouse.
Gabe: Gavin doesn’t hit his head on anything…
Becket: There’s not that many amps there.
Gavin: …except that one PA.
Gabe: It’s like a [inaudible] basement. It’s just so great to perform in.
Maxine: I like Stay Gold [Deli in Oakland]. We did it last week and that was pretty sweet and pretty fun.
Sean: Stay Gold was rad and that sounded good too.
Gabe: Bottom of The Hill is a venue we’ve been hosted at a few times.
Maxine: That’s what we played yesterday.
Sean: No, that was Neck of The Woods. Oh no, it was Bottom of The Hill.
Gabe: Yeah: I mix up those two.
Maxine: There’re pretty similar.
Gabe: Neck of The Woods, I would say it’s 4 or 5 blocks from our house.
Maxine: It’s down the street.
Gabe: So, we like playing there because it’s close to our house.
Amahli: Easy load-in.
Sean: I think our best set was probably at our buddies backyard in the Sunset [District].
Gavin: Oh, yeah.
Maxine: That one was really good.
Gabe: I thought the Febuary show was pretty good.
Maxine: That was a mixed bag.
Amahli: When did they play?
Gabe: Febuary?
Amahli: Yeah.
Gabe: We played with them on the 28th I think.
Gavin: 28th of April.
Amahli: Oh, for their West Coast leg [of their tour].
Sean: Yeah, that was at Neck of The Woods.
Gabe: (laughs) We played with Febuary.
Amahli: I was at their Subrosa show and it was the most packed I’ve seen that space.
Maxine: They have a lot of fans. I think that one song has almost 2 million streams.
Gabe: The fact that we had that show with them was like, “okay, damn. We really gotta get ready for that.” I feel like that show was what pushed us to really lock in.
Sean: They were really great too. I mean they played really great there. Really, really nice people. Shout out to them. They’re really great.
Amahli: How would you describe your live audience?
Maxine: It’s kinda a mixed bag. It depends on who else is going to be there to be honest. There’s a large range of age groups, I’d say. Sometimes, it’s a younger crowd.
Gabe: I would say it’s like the younger crowd, especially with the Febuary show. I mean, that one was packed, but other times, like the Stay Gold show, there will maybe be 20,25 people there.
Maxine: Almost like a lot of younger kids at the Stay Gold show.
Sean: I think people are excited. They’re excited there’s music in San Francisco right now. There’s some really good music in San Francisco, in the Bay Area. But there’s not too much, so when there’s shows with some bands on a lineup, people get really excited. They show out, they show up.
Maxine: They’re maybe 2 or 3 bands that are in San Francisco, like the city.
Amahli: I know there’s you guys and…their name is escaping me, but I think just in the bay in general, there’s a really solid scene.
Maxine and Gabe: With Open Arms.
Gabe: They’re another band like us.
Sean: Yeah, they’re good.
Maxine: They’re sick.
Sean: Nice people. AND TAXI! Shoutout Taxi.
Maxine and Gabe: Shoutout Taxi.
Maxine: They’re playing pretty soon, at Tamarack.
Amahli: With First Day Back.
Gabe: They’re gonna have an album coming out or…
Becket: A single, yeah, I recorded their single. I was actually supposed to do an EP for them, but they don’t have a lot of the vocal parts for it and so it’s just turned into a single. Kind of a shame because I think all the songs are great but the one they’re choosing for a single is a great song. I think everyone’s going to like it.
Sean: Excited regardless, they’re great. Everyone should check it out.
Amahli: There’s a list, a mental list of bands I want to see [live]. Taxi is one of them, also Pete Danger and Dahlia Cross.
Sean: They’re awesome too. Dahlia Cross is pretty rad, shoutout Angel.
Amahli: Is there a particularly memorable show you’ve played at?
Gabe: That backyard show was pretty lit.
Maxine: The house show.
Sean: That was fun because it was a party too, as well as a show.
Gabe: I didn’t stay for the party, was there actually a party afterward or was it just dying down?
Maxine: It was that dude’s birthday.
Sean: It was lowkey just us getting lit in the backyard.
Gabe: I mean that’s chill.
Amahli: Are there any songs on your current music rotation? I need some music recs, honestly.
Sean: Daïtro. They’re great from France.
Gabe: Melancholy Club, if you haven’t heard of them.
Sean: Fakemink from London.
Maxine: The Song “Elevator” by Edaline. They have this live album. It was recorded at Bottom of The Hill. All the songs are really good off that.
Amahli: I’ve only listened to “Vintage Postcards” off that album, but they’re a really good, really solid band.
Sean: Punxsutawney just released their album. It’s like an instrumental, post-rock band from LA. They’re really great. I like that album a lot.
Gavin: Ever since we played with Foilsick, I’ve been listening to a lot of Foilsick. They’re really good. I put a lot of them on the [band] playlist. That was me.
Sean: Do Not Shameful. Also from San Francisco. They’re really good.
Amahli: Are there any bands on the bucket list to play with?
Gavin: Jeromes Dream.
Maxine: Orchid.
Becket: Saetia [inaudible].
Sean: Portraits of Past.
Amahli: Are you going to their show in a week, I think?
Maxine: The one in LA?
Amahli: They’re headlining in San Francisco I think on the 31st.
Maxine: I saw that yeah. I’m trying to go.
Gabe: I didn’t know about that.
Maxine: I don’t know if it’s sold out, but I don’t know that’d be cool.
Amahli: I guess I only have one more question. What do you think the parameters for emo and screamo are? What makes a bad part of that genre?
Maxine: I guess it’s a pretty wide range of sounds within the genre. I feel like the only thing that ties it together is the mix of like fast or slow or hard or melodic elements kind of coming together, I think that’s genre defining. And then obviously like screaming vocals, at least in some parts.
Gabe: Abrupt pauses and surprises.
Maxine: Lots of pauses. But I don’t know. The genre is really wide. I think there’s a lot of different things, like on the spectrum of what screamo that can all be put under the umbrella of it.
Amahli: I guess my paper [I’m writing] is trying to answer that question and I still don’t know. Just the quiets and louds like you guys said.
Becket: I think it might be in some way defined by the width of the genre. I feel like that might be a characteristic of screamo, that it can go from like a melodeath riff into a midwest emo tapping section. I feel like that’s that music genre…
Gabe: …There’s a band that does that called Piglet. Exactly what you just said.
Sean: It’s a lot of screaming.
Amahli: (laughs) Why are they screaming like that? I don’t know.
Sean: I always thought it would kind of be hardcore elements and stuff, but sad instead of angry. Looking out all angry telling everyone, “get up, get to the front, and punch someone in the face!” It’s not, I mean there’s a little bit of that, but not as much. Different, I don’t know, kind of same level of amount of emotion, I guess. Different emotions behind it.
Amahli: I’ve been trying to think of one happy screamo song and none are coming to mind. But I guess that’s all I have.
This interview has been slightly edited for depth and clarity.