It seems more and more these days that the term “post-hardcore” is returning in a new form. One may have not heard this term used too often since the Fugazi days but post-hardcore now holds a completely different meaning, and Title Fight are the perfect example of what is now deemed a “post-hardcore” band. With a signature sound and feeling behind their music, the outfit recently released their new album, Floral Green. I shared a few words with bassist Ned Russin before the start of their current tour to talk about the band’s upcoming shows, Floral Green, and more. The transcription is below:
Tomorrow is the start of your tour with Pianos Become The Teeth, with select dates featuring Tigers Jaw. Are there any pre-tour rituals you guys have been doing to get ready?
We don’t really have any rituals. No pre-tour or pre-show, really. I guess the thing that we kind of always do is procrastinate and put things off. So right now we gotta go and get a new GPS, and we’re getting the trailer hitch fixed. Usually the day before the tour we’re running around picking up merch. It’s really all of the stuff that we should have done weeks and weeks ago, but we like to put things off for some reason, I don’t know why.
Are there any cities that you guys are looking forward to playing most on the tour?
I think just this whole tour in general is something that we have been looking forward to for a very long time. We did a lot of touring this year and most of it was out of our comfort zone. It’s good to do something new and to push ourselves in a different direction while at the same time, what we’ve always loved doing is playing with our friends in small places, and playing a lot. To be able to do that again is just the most exciting thing for us. The fact that we have a new record out and get to play new songs is just making it even better. All of the songs are just sounding better the more we play.
We’ve always enjoyed playing places like Anaheim, California, Boston, Massachusetts, and Texas is always really cool. There’s obviously just so many cities that we’ve been to and that we’ve fell in love with. Getting back to the cities that you’ve enjoyed playing is always cool.
How was your record release show?
It was awesome. It was honestly my favorite show that we’ve ever played. It was one of the best shows that we’ve ever played. It was one of the most stressful shows. It was a lot of work into something that literally could have been shut down within minutes. We built the stage ourselves, rented the P.A., and had all this stuff, and there were mostly local bands and friends. It was crazy. There were so many kids. Everything went so well and I couldn’t even believe it.
It was in a town called Warrior Run, which is only 15 minutes away from us that had a small population before we even did the show, and we literally doubled the population in the building. We had more people in the building than had lived in the entire town. It was definitely a really cool thing to be a part of. We put in a lot of hard work and it definitely paid off because it was a really good show.
How do you find ways to keep it fresh with each new record?
When we sit down to write any song, one of the most important things to us is to push ourselves. I think that comes from going on tour with bands that are different from us and being exposed to new things: listening to new bands in general, hearing new things, expressing ourselves in music, and writing new songs and lyrics. Life in general always adds something to whatever we’re writing. Our mentality—for this record, at least—is that we really wanted to push ourselves and to expand what we’ve already done before and to not do the same thing again.
I’m really proud of the records that we’ve done in the past. I have no regrets about anything we’ve ever done. I feel like that music was good, and it’s still good, but I don’t really want to write that again. We wrote it once and I think we did a really good job with it and I want to just keep moving forward. All of those things combined help us do something a little different.
Was there any feeling that you guys were going for when writing the new record?
I definitely see that there is a common theme within the records. People always ask us about reoccurring themes and ideas that we’re trying to put out. Specifically for this record, it wasn’t about themes or anything. When I stepped out and wrote my portion of the songs, it was just like writing lyrics at any given point in time. They just happened to fit and work together. They fit but it was unintentional. I said it with the last record and it still applies; it’s kind of like a “coming of age” type of thing.
We’re in our early 20s and we’re continuing to grow up, and we see people around us doing different things and we’re doing different things as well. We’re just trying to figure out our place in the world and I think that that’s a very important thing to do. The situation that we’ve been living in makes it so difficult to think about. We see kids our age graduating from school and starting a professional career while we’re on the road writing, touring, and doing all this other stuff. I love it and it’s been my main passion since I was a kid. It’s still something that I don’t have to question.
What happened with your venue, Redwood Art Space?
In our town, there have been venues forever. One of them that lasted just shy of 15 years closed down and there was a hole in our community, so some friends of ours, and us, decided to step up and make a new venue to give kids a place to go and bands a place to play. It was kind of off the beaten path in the middle of nowhere. We didn’t really have any problems because there weren’t many neighbors and it was a pretty ideal location besides it being a little bit of a trek to get to. We ran it for a little bit over a year.
Eventually, we started getting contacted by the local zoning company because we ran it completely illegally. We went through all of that work and it was sorted out right away and we kept going and now we were a legit business. Out of nowhere, they came out saying that they redid their contract and that we had to pay X amount of money per show and that they would either approve or deny any show and that there would be police and security. We decided at that point to just move locations. We had started looking before.
We found a new location and are moving in as we speak. It’s taking a long time but we’re going to try to be up and running by the end of the year. It’s bigger and I think it’s just going to be better than the last one. We’re going to have more shows and more people.
Was the venue originally intended to have local bands?
Yeah, it was for everybody. We get a good amount of touring bands, but we’re not a major city. We don’t get as much as New York or Philadelphia. We don’t have enough to where we can have a show every night of the week, but we can have two or three a week. When bands come through, of course, we want to put them up for the night, but more importantly we want to have a place for local kids and local bands to play in. Because of our local venue growing up, we got to play with bands and got to see so many different bands. We just wanted to be able to give other people that same opportunity that we had.
After this tour, what’s next for title fight?
The tour leads us pretty much right up until the beginning of December. We have one show around the holidays and then we’ll kind of take it easy for a little bit, and then start planning some stuff for the beginning of next year. We’re just going to keep touring and playing our new songs. We have the same goal pretty much every year. We just wanna play as much as possible and to write new music. Our favorite part about being in a band is being able to play live, so we try and do that as much as possible. I think we’re gonna just be out on the road a lot and do what we love.
Title Fight will play the Bowery Ballroom on Nov. 29 and Philly’s Union Transfer on Nov. 30. For more information, go to titlefight.tumblr.com.
