Vocalist James Munoz Of The Bled Sits Down For A Chat
March 31st, 2008 by Jackie
The Bled are an unusually creative band of hardcore music hailing from Tucson AZ. Creating music they love with a whole new attitude that shows these guys are serious about the work and love they put into their music. I got a chance to sit and have a little chit-chat with lead vocalist James Munoz. We were in a pub, The Irish Times, across the street from The Palladium in Worcester, Mass on March 21.
SO YOU GUYS JUST RELEASED YOU RECORD SILENT TREATMENT. DO YOU THINK THIS ALBUM WILL MAKE A BIGGER IMPACT FOR YOUÂ SINCE YOU WORKED ON IT LONGER?
I hope it does. Its just kinda one of those things where we didn’t necessarily have the, well we weren’t intending to take that long to write it. But we kept going and going and we figured we would put more time into it, we weren’t ready to record. Then we were going to have an earlier recording time, like we were supposed to go into the studio before, but it got pushed back, so that helped a lot, we had even more time to get it done. They way we write, we were going at it pretty hard, at least 5 days a week. Then once we got to
Baltimore, we basically had another two months to work on stuff and record and do all that. So hopefully people can tell we put a lot of hard work into it.
DID YOU GO INTO THE STUDIO WITH A PERSPECTIVE OF HOW YOU WANTED TO RECORD TO COME OUT?
I think we wanted to write something that was more energetic and would blend itself better with our live show. We’ve done stuff on the record that sounds cool, if you’re listening to it, but some songs come off better in the live show than on the record. This time around we wanted to do something that would be fun to play live and that we thought would be cool. We wouldn’t really have to over think it, if we were trying to play it live. It wasn’t too complicated to do a wild sounding that would be totally different if we played it live. That was like the biggest goal.
DID YOU ALL WRITE FOR THIS ALBUM?
Yea, everybody put their two cents into it. Mainly I did a lot of them this time around. Jeremy did a couple. I think working with Brian helped out a lot, because he’s a musician, he like a guy that grew up in the same scene, well not the same scene, punk bands and a young musician. So he taught us really well.
NOW, DO YOU THINK YOUR PERSONALITIES WENT INTO YOUR MUSIC?
At certain parts, you can hear all of out influences and styles more, to me at least. I can hear our personalities more on this record, like the first record was, we were really young and we just wanted to write ten songs so we can record them, just the idea of being in the studio and recording. But this time around it’s more of who THE BLED is and what we want to do.
HOW DID YOU PICK THE ELEVEN SONGS THAT YOU DID OUTTA THE FOURTEEN THAT YOU WROTE?
Some of them just kinda disintegrated once we got into the studio. We wrote a couple while we were in the studio; they just came out of nowhere basically. Brain was pushing us all the time and never letting us slack and he we was always riding us and just keeping going and going. Sure enough a couple of songs came out that weren’t very complete. We took parts from one song and put it into others. Some songs scraped, only like one or two. We recorded all of them and a couple came out as b-side. These songs are definitely the most solid and most exciting songs to us.
NOW ASIDE FROM THE WHOLE ALBUM TALK, LETS GET TO KNOW YOU A LITTLE BETTER. HOW DID YOU GET INTO SINGING AND WANTING TO BE IN A ROCK BAND?
I think I’ve always knew I was going to do something in music. My dad was a musician and he always had a guitars and stuff around the house. He wasn’t really pushing me to do that, but I definitely had an access to al his music collections and all that stuff. And my mom drummed in high school. It’s just one of those weird things, not insanely musically talented, I can play guitar and play piano. I’m not one of those guys that can talk about music theory for hours. I always wanted to play music and my mom and dad had good musical taste. I started listening to AEROSMITH and Steven Tyler. He was the shit and I wanted to be that guy. That’s as honest as your gonna get.
HOW DO YOU GET WARMED UP FOR A SHOW?
Sometimes the energy in the crowd is already there. Sometimes it’s a weird crowd and you need to do synchronized jumping jacks or synchronized jager bombs, like three jager bombs. But if you go beyond that, you might puke on stage. That Redbull just will not stay down. But a lot of times you just gotta check out the crowd for the opening bands, if they’re rowdy then it will be good. We kinda have our own daily routines, no set thing. We don’t meditate or anything, well we did that a couple of times, we sat in a circle and lit candles and started chanting, just to freak out the other bands. We are weirdos; we love pranks and just being outta control.
WHAT IS ONE THING YOU CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT?
In general, umm… I think this leather jacket because I’ve had it for seven years. I’ve taken it around on tours and I just can’t part ways with it. I lose a lot of shit on the road, like my favorite shirt or whatever. Someone will steal or ill leave it somewhere. If you leave it out side the van it will just disappear. If I lost this I would be really pissed off.
NOW, DID YOU BUY IT?
Yea, I bought it. Why?
I WAS GOING TO SEE IF IT WAS A GIFT OR NOT.
No, yea I bought it.
DID YOU STEAL IT (laughing)?
Yea I stole this from this other guy and I would be really mad. Maybe that’s what I need to start doing, start stealing things so I won’t be so mad if I lose it.
SO, HOW IS VAGRANT RECORDS TREATING YOU?
I think they are doing alright. They’ve always kept us informed about what is going on. What’s so funny? (As Stephanie and I are laughing)
*STEPHANIE* EDDIE FROM VAGRANT IS THE SLOWEST MAN ON THE EARTH, HE WONT TELL ANYBODY ANYTHING.
Holy shit, well he’s Eddie.
HE NEVERS TELLS ANYONE WHATS GOING ON, YOU GUYS DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THAT YOU WERE GOING TO DO THIS INTERVIEW.
Yea, I didn’t know this, was that his fault. I don’t know, I think being a label now is really hard and they’re trying to do what they’ve always been doing. It would be great if we could be musician and not worry about the serious business side. There is so much bullshit going on right now, it’s really hard to stay focused and do your main job, which is your passion. All the things you put your heart into and you gotta consider this whole world, with this other bullshit that is going on. It just sucks sometimes, but whatever, cheers!
IF YOU COULD CHANGE INTO ANY ANIMAL FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
A panda.
WHY?
Because I heard they are really horny. That’s my answer.
(Laughing) IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT YOU GUYS, THE ALBUM??
Umm… yea, we are probably gonna start working on stuff during the summer. And hopefully do a proper headlining tour, cover all the states and bring out some good bands and until then I will be growing out this beard, so I’ll probably look like a lumberjack or a dirty biker, and this jacket will suit me even better.
