The Beatings have been around the block for sure: Since forming over ten years ago, Eldridge, Erin, Tony, Dennis and most recently acquired member Greg have been bouncing ideas off each other, getting songs down on tape and playing their music from the East Coast to the West Coast and back again.  Though based in Boston and undeniably a Boston Band, the members of The Beatings definitely raise an eyebrow when it comes to discussing their relationship with the city they call home.  The Beatings express nothing but warmly-worded gratitude for their loyal Boston fanbase who have been coming out to shows over the course of the past decade, but there’s a tinge of resentment in the voice of Beatings frontman Eldridge Rodriguez’s when asked about his feelings on the Boston band moniker.  What it comes down to is this: The Beatings, as a fiercely talented fivesome, have been making music for years, and given that Boston is a city saturated with talent and lacking in the number of venues, it’s a little surprising that The Beatings have remained a best-kept secret of sorts.  As a band who’s paid their dues playing bars and clubs and grimy stages all over Boston, New York, and other cities of note that they’ve hit touring the country a whopping eight times, it’s interesting that avid indie rock fans in Boston seem surprised when The Beatings reveal that, hey, maybe they’ve received a warmer welcome elsewhere and that other cities have appeared to be more receptive of their rock.  Regardless of whether or not Bostonians are flocking to Allston and Cambridge to hear The Beatings live for the first time or they’re back for another great show, their roots are here, and this familial relationship with the city has it’s ups and downs as any kinship with a loved one would.

We caught The Beatings outside in the pouring rain just before the Late Season Kids CD release party at Great Scott a while back, and luckily the guys (and girl!) were cool with moving the interview inside over cheap beers before the opener’s sound check.  The Beatings will be headlining Upstairs at the Middle East on October Read on for a look back on how The Beatings started, their thoughts on their Boston roots and what exactly happened that night in Tennessee when they played next to an exploding bridge.

-Hilary Hughes

OPENING ACT: THE BEATINGS AND THE TEAPARTY TEN

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

Erin: Kashi! Go Lean!

Greg: I don’t eat breakfast…

Tony: No.  I don’t touch cereal.

Eldridge: I haven’t touched cereal since grade school, I think.

E: Am I the only one who eats breakfast?!

T: I have coffee and then maybe lunch.

Dennis: I’ll eat a banana…

Who would you rather punch in the face: Long Duk Dong from “Sixteen Candles”, or Mouth from “The Goonies”?

T: Long Duk Dong knows how to party!  I’m punching Mouth.

ER: Mouth got me through some tough times.

E: I’d punch Mouth.  They were making fun of Long Duk Dong because he’s Asian!  He’s the underdog!  I’m not gonna punch the underdog.

D: I’d punch Mouth, yeah.

If you were a kitchen appliance, what would you be?

E: An oven, ‘cause it’s HOT! (Laughs)

D: I’d be one of those grippy things that helps open jars.

T: Probably one of those cranking mixers.

ER: … Like an eggbeater?

T: Yeah.

G: I’d be a George Forman Grill because I’d be in everyone’s house.

D: Yeah, you’re kind of the George Foreman Grill of Boston musicians…

ER: I’m the spatula.

You go to bed, wake up, walk into the bathroom to brush your teeth, and you look in the mirror and you realize that you’ve turned into one of Jim Henson’s Muppets overnight.  Which Muppet are you?

E: Janice!

ER: Doctor Teeth!

T: One of the dudes in the balcony, either Statler or Waldorf.

D: Me too. I’d be the old guy in the balcony that he’s not.

G: I’d be the airplane bomber guy with the big bags under his eyes because I don’t really sleep.

ER: I’d be the Swedish Chef.  He wasn’t fluent in Swedish or English, he was fluent in Swedinglish.

Say you have a crazy night, you black out, and you wake up feeling like crap the next morning and you realize… you got a tattoo.  What’d you get inked?

G: For me, it’d be a big anchor on my chest because, I, uh, already have a big anchor tattooed on my chest….

E: This is so cliché for a librarian, but I’d get an owl on my arm or something.

ER: It has to be the owl from Clash of the Titans.  I would get all my body parts labeled.  Nose, eye, forearm…

D: I’d get a black “B” tattooed on my left hand so that I could get into shows for free.

G: Why don’t you just get a big fluorescent band around your wrist?

ER: I’d get like, a puma or something.  Or something with glitter.

Would you rather be a rodeo clown or a sumo wrestler?

ER: RODEO CLOWN.  That’s respect.

D: I’d have trouble inverting my penis, so I’m going to go with rodeo clown.

G: I agree.  I’d definitely be a rodeo clown.  I can’t put on the weight.

T: And the wardrobe is a hundred times more manly!  I could look at myself in the mirror after work if I was a rodeo clown.

E: Yeeeeah rodeo clown.

If you were a particular style of facial hair, what would you be?

G: I’d get the Fisherman, which is when your sideburns grow into your mustache.

ER: If I could grow facial hair, which I can’t, because it comes out all Teen-Wolfy, I’d get a nice pencil-thin mustache.

T: I’d get a full-on Civil War general-style beard.  And I’d gain fifty pounds just to match the beard, too, and I’d walk around with a uniform too.

D: I’d go with a unibrow.  I’d like to know what that feels like.  I want to know those people’s pain.  I would understand them better once I learned how to walk the streets like that.

E: I’d be a dirt ‘stache.

If you were a type of cheese, which cheese would you be?

E: Fake, soy cheese.

G: Yup, soy cheese.

T: Blue cheese.

D: I feel like a Romano I think.  Aged Romano.

ER: I’d be Parmesan shaky cheese.  Like, Kraft shaky cheese.

What’s your quintessential “I’M GONNA DANCE AROUND MY APARTMENT IN MY SKIVVIES AND LOVE LIFE!” song?

ER: “Moon River.”  You gotta listen to the beats they AREN’T playing.

That’s an interesting choice.

ER: It’s a solemn dance.

D: It’d be just the intro to “Money Or Nothing”.  As soon as they start singing, I turn it off.

T: “Maneater”, Hall and Oates.

G: “Big Country” by Big Country.

E: Foreigner’s “Cold As Ice”.

What’s your favorite word?

G: I say “Dang!” a lot.

T: Pantalones.

D: I like “panty” because of the polarizing effect it has on women.

ER: I like “bagina”, with a B, and “turd-burger” a lot.

E: Meep. I like “meep.”  It’s a term of endearment.

THE MAIN EVENT: THE BEATINGS TPB INTERVIEW

Hey guys!  We’re here tonight to celebrate the release of Late Season Kids, your latest album. This is a nice little party we’re about to have.

Eldridge Rodriguez: It is.

Erin: Yeah!

Before we start talking about the album, can we get the back-story on The Beatings? How did you all come to make music together, and where you come from?

ER: Tony and I grew up with each other, outside of New York, right on the Jersey border and outside Manhattan. We’ve known each other since we were in the fifth grade.  I left for school, and I met Dennis while I was studying at UMass Amherst. Dennis and I moved to Boston together, and that’s where we met Erin.  Tony then came up to live in Boston for a while, and then Tony moved back down to New York. Once everyone was up here we started playing together.  In the last two months or so, we added Greg to start playing with us as well.

Let’s talk influences for The Beatings. What artists and musicians do you draw inspiration from?  Who’s helped you cultivate your creativity as players and songwriters?

G: It’s pretty varied I guess. For me, personally, it’s the 80s alternative explosion kind of stuff. College rock mostly, stuff like R.E.M.  I’m really into The Pixies.

E: We’re all writing in the band. We’re collaborating, so you’re getting influences from all of this. And I think it’s very varied. Sonic Youth would be my main influence. The Pixies, too.

Tony: We’re kind of hard rock; we’re kind of metal; Folk. Between all of us, there’s a lot of stuff that somebody will love and bring to the band. And when they play it to the rest of us, they’ll be like, “I love this band”. And everybody else doesn’t get it. But when it comes to the band, it all seems to work.

E: Yeah!

ER: I’m trying to avoid the word “synergy”, but The Beatings has a good one of those.

We’ll thesaurus that.  As musicians, I’m assuming you didn’t just pick up a guitar yesterday and have never played in a band before. How is The Beatings different from other projects you’ve worked on before, and what do you really enjoy about this collaboration?

ER: It’s hard to say because we’ve been playing for a really long time together, for about ten years, now.

T: With the exception of some high school acts I played with, I’ve really only ever played with Eldridge.

E: Yeah, me too.

T: And Eldridge and I played together in high school, so… I don’t know how to play with anyone else. (Laughs)

E: Yeah, I me too. (Laughs)

ER: It’s kind of like when you’re getting picked for kickball teams, and you guys are the last four people to get picked. And you’re like, “Fuck it, we’ll start our own game!” That’s kind of the way it turned out. We just started playing with each other, and realized that we could tolerate each other and work with each other, and we just haven’t stopped.   We’re all really good , too. It’s not like we’re just acquaintances who play together. We’re in each other’s lives even when we’re not in a band.  We were at each other’s weddings. I mean, it’s been such a long relationship. It’s always felt like its been there, so I don’t know where it comes from, or where it developed. It’s just been there as far as I can remember.

When it comes to the collaborative nature of The Beatings, you mentioned that you’re all writers. Can you take me through your creative process?

T: Generally, somebody will write a song or an idea for a song or a skeleton of a song, and present it to everybody else. From there, it will usually take a life of its own. I have an enormous amount of confidence that if I have good idea about a song, I can bring it in and it will come out a very good song after it’s over with. I’ll have a skeleton of an idea and between all of us, we can make it into something worth listening to. Repeatedly.

D: I don’t really write songs, but what I feel like I add is just arranging things. You know what I mean?

G: But what about those vignette songs?

D: Those aren’t really songs-

ER: they’re vignettes!

D: Yeah, but everybody brings something in and whether it’s the kernel of the song, or ideas for other people’s songs.  It’s really collaborative like that.

ER: We share songwriting credit on all the records, and I feel like that’s totally the way it is.

And lyrically, is it that way, too? I know that sometimes when people talk about writing, it’s very different discussing lyrics as opposed to talking about the compositional aspect of it.

ER: It depends. For the most part, the person that brought the song in writes the lyrics, but there are several songs where I’ve needed lines and such and I come in and I’m like, “Hey! Guys!”

E: “Scorched Earth Policy” was your song that you brought in and were like, “What are we going to do with this?” So then I started writing lyrics, and Eldridge wrote lyrics, and it evolved.

ER: Someone certainly takes the brunt of the responsibility, lyric-wise, but it’s still a shared responsibility.  If someone writes a really horrible line, we’re comfortable enough with each other to go, like, “Hey, that really is kind of sucky, and it would embarrass me to play that on stage”.

That’s a really good point to be at in collaboration, I feel.   That’s great system of bounce ideas off of.

ER: Yeah!  I know it sounds cliché, but it really feels like a family.  We’re in each other’s lives on a daily basis. Even with Tony in New York, we talk every single day. Not necessarily about band stuff, just checking up, seeing how everything is going. “Did you read this comic book? Did you see that show? Did you do this?” So, it just feels like family. With family, you have spats, and then you realize that you’re kind of dug in. You can’t really get out of it, so you make up and you move on.  (Laughs)

You’ve mentioned that you guys have been working together for ages and that you’ve all got a hand in the songwriting.  Are there any songs from The Beatings’ catalog that stick out as favorites to you, or that you really enjoy playing live, or any songs that you’re especially excited to play for us tonight?

ER: I’m always excited to play “Heavy Metal”, because it’s a really spastic song and I really get a kick out of it.

G: The crowd seems to like it too, and a lot of times most people will come up on stage and sing.

ER: I like all of them. I really do. I don’t think we would have made them if we didn’t like them. We’ve always talked about that. The only reason you play in a band is to make songs you want to hear, like, “I wish there was more of this type of thing out there!” and then we write a song like that.

E: I like “Shark Attacks On The Rise”, but we haven’t been playing that for the last couple shows so I think we should play that. I’m going to lobby for that at our next show.

T: I get very excited to play the new stuff, just because it’s fun to see what’s going to happen and how the audience is going to respond to it. It seems like we just all write this stuff in our little vacuum, and when we take it out on stage it’s interesting to present it to new people and see what the response is going to be. We always get very excited about our new songs. We’re all like, “This is an awesome song!”  We’re modest that way!  We’re pretty in love with ourselves, but it’s nice to see other people fall in love with us, too. (Laughs)

ER: I feel like that especially on tour, when you’re playing in places you don’t know, and you get to see how they react to that stuff. It’s just exciting.

E: It’s really nice when there’s not that many people there, and you’re sitting at the merch table feeling kind of defeated, and someone comes up and is like, “I’ve seen you every time you’ve come. I have all your albums”. It’s that one person who saves the day. It’s just what you need when you’re touring.

D: I really like a lot of the early stuff, in terms of just fun stuff to play.  I also get excited about even us just writing stuff on stage sometimes, or adding new flairs or fills or whatever.

Do you guys have any crazy stories from The Beatings’ tour bus, so to speak? Any adventures on the road?  Tell us about your time on tour together.

ER: Well, we just came back a week and a half ago from tour.  We got some stories, but they’re definitely not Motley Crue style. Maybe Motley Crue, like, now.

Yeah, Tommy Lee’s pretty ridiculous, still…

ER: A lot of weird shit has happened in ten years.

E: The craziest thing was in Tennessee, though.

ER: Bridges blowing up…

Wait, what? Hopefully you weren’t driving over said bridge-

ER: No, but we were in the middle of playing, and all of a sudden everyone left-

T: And Knoxville is a place we usually do pretty well in and there’s a good crowd, but all of a sudden there was nobody left in the room. We look up at the end of a song, and it’s like, “Wow. We really cleared the room.” But the sound guy came up to us and told us that everyone left to watch the bridge blow up. He invited us to go watch with him, and was like, “Just come back whenever the bridge is blown up and everybody will be back here, I’m sure!” Sure enough, everybody was. We heard a giant boom, and then everybody came back in.   Generally, though, I can really only speak for myself, but – especially when we’re touring – I feel like I leave so much on the stage that there’s not much left over for partying afterwards. And if there is something left over, I almost feel like I haven’t done something right while playing.  If you have that much energy at the end of a show, there’s something you need to do on stage.

G: I concur. We tell some really funny jokes to each other while we’re watching TV afterwards. (Laughs)

So, let’s talk about what you’re listening to now. If I were to steal the iPods of The Beatings, what would I find in the Recently Added playlist?

ER: Hands and Knees, who are playing tonight. Label-mates. My wife and I have really gotten really into Mariachi music, so there’s a lot of that playing in the house.

E: I just started listening today to this band called St. Helena. They’re also from Boston. I had never heard them before, but I got the CD recently, and it was like, “Oh! This is really good.”

G: I’ve actually been listening to a lot of Spaghetti Western soundtracks lately. I’ve been all about that, I don’t really know why.

T: I just bought The Dark Side of the Moon.

Have you watched it with The Wizard of Oz yet?

T: No.

G: It works!

T: I know! I’m just listening to it for right now.

D: One band I’ve recently gotten into is Band of Horses. I’ve gotten pretty heavy into them over the last couple of months. And M. Ward.  I discovered Post-War a couple of months ago. That’s been on pretty heavy rotation ever since.

Now, in Boston, you guys have a pretty heavy following here…

ER: I don’t think we’ve ever felt comfortable in Boston.

Really?

ER: I think we’ve always felt like we were on the outside looking in. We’ve always done better in other cities. New York has always been really good to us.  Other places have always really supported us. It’s great, but then we come home, and we feel like we’re fighting for scraps in our hometown.  But I think that’s all going to change after this release so… (laughs)

E: It’s that and it’s the fact that there’s so much more media now then there was ten years ago, with blogs and networking… So I just think we’re getting more press lately. But also, just in general, I feel like more people are interested in The Beatings in Boston now.

ER: I mean, the crowd and the scene has always been supportive. It’s weird when you walk down the street in New York – on  a random night that we’re not playing- people will be like, “Hey, you’re The Beatings!”-

T: That’s even happened in South Carolina.  Weird.

ER: And then you come back and people up here are like, “Never heard of you. Are you guys new?” ‘No, we’ve been around like ten years.’ “Well, do you guys play out?” ‘Yeah, fairly regularly; you’re on our email list, dude’.

I mean, would you call Boston your hometown, in the sense that this-

All: Yeah!

Well, it’s really interesting that you’re received better in other cities. Why do you think that is?

E: Well, there are so many bands here. It’s a small city, and there are tons of bands here for a city of this size.

ER: I don’t think the situation is unique to us. There are plenty of bands from here that I know that I think are absolutely brilliant. And do really well outside the city.

Who are some of those bands?

ER: Black Helicopter only a couple of years ago finally started getting props in the city and those guys have been around longer than us. It’s a weird thing. You don’t know what people are going to respond to. You don’t know what the local press and media are going to respond to. It’s all a crapshoot!

T: I think our relationship with Boston is pretty much what they said: There’s just a lot of bands here. And it’s so small… I don’t think it’s any sort of giant cosmic conspiracy or anything like that.

ER: See that’s where you and I differ. (laughs) I think it’s absolutely a conspiracy.

T: Just look at the odds, the numbers…

Well, what keeps The Beatings here? What makes you stay in Boston?

D: Well, I think, musically, every thing everyone has said so far is pretty much true, but I also think one of the neat parts about it is coming home from a tour and seeing a lot of familiar faces up there. And we’ve had those as well. I feel like we do have a small and devoted following and for me, that’s worth a lot more than stuff like getting sold spaces.  It’s just seeing people that know us and appreciate us.  We’ve had that in Boston, so it always feels like home.

ER: I don’t mean to besmirch Boston, don’t get me wrong! I’m not besmirching- I’m smirching Boston. I think Boston’s a great city. But I do harbor a resentment towards…

G: The giant cosmic conspiracy.

ER: The giant cosmic conspiracy.

ER: When it comes down to it, I love Boston.  That’s the reason why I stay here, is because I absolutely love Boston.

E: Yeah!

G: And he bought a house!

ER: Yup.  We bought a house in Lower Allston last June.  I love Boston.  I absolutely love it.  Maybe you always feel a little bit stronger towards something you care about, I don’t know.  I kind of feel like it’s the parent who doesn’t pay enough attention to you and then when you’re older you’re like, “WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME?!”

G: Eldridge is like, “LOOK AT ME! HEY! ME! LOOK AT ME!”

ER: “I’m screaming!  I’m yelling!  I’m playing guitar, what do you want?!”  I don’t know, maybe I’m being overly harsh.  Tomorrow, I may be like, “Boston has the most supportive scene on the planet!”  And to an extent, I believe that: I think that Boston has some of the most supportive radio stations on the planet.  The college radio stations are the more supportive I’ve seen of bands on tour.

E: We have completely changed our minds about Boston based on what we were saying earlier…

We’ve talked about Boston’s general lack of venues, but what are your favorite Boston venues to play when you’re back in town?  You’re having your CD release party at Great Scott tonight.  Is there a reason for that?

E: Yeah!  They’re AWESOME!

ER: We’ve also had a relationship with Carl for forever.  It’s a great room.

G: The sound at Great Scott is the best.

ER: We like the shows they put together here.  I also like the Middle East and I love TT the Bear’s Place.

G: Generally, if a club likes us we like them! (Laughs)

T: We’ve had great shows at PA’s Lounge, too.

ER: The few clubs that are still here are very supportive of the local scene, and I think it’s great.  It feels like a scene, you know?  When we tour and we talk to people, they’ll say that there isn’t a scene, that there aren’t radio stations who will play their music and that there aren’t bands who bill with each other on a regular basis.  Boston has that.

I think it’s interesting to talk about the New York to Boston relationship and to talk about the differences versus pros and cons between the two cities.

ER: A lot of it has to do with the universities here and that a lot of kids split for New York once they graduate, but the scene in New York is weird, too.  Boston is a smaller city so you have to deal with the hand you have here and you have to deal with the clubs here as this city doesn’t move at the same pace as New York.  I like neither city more than the other.

When it comes to other Boston bands that you enjoy, if you could bill the perfect Boston band show, what Boston bands playing in town right now are acts you’d love to do a show with?

ER: Ernie and the Automatics.

T: I like that Hallelujah the Hills band.

G: Ketman’s good!

ER: There aren’t many bills we’ve played that I haven’t liked.  Ian Adams I like.  There are bands I like and then there are bands I care about.  I feel like we pair with more noisy bands in general.

How is Late Season Kids a departure from previous material by The Beatings?

T: I don’t know if it’s a departure.  One of the things I always loved about REM is that every REM album was, like, just a little different to keep it exciting, but it was identifiably REM.  Every single one of our records is the same way.  There’s no way I could love the last Beatings record more than this one, and then the next one comes along and I think it’s the best one after that.  It just feel like our music is always growing and we’re always learning from it.  I think we’re always just trying to impress each other I guess, or something.

E: We’re playing better and getting tighter!

D: I think this one is different, too, in that there are a few songs that we hadn’t really played in front of people before recording them.  A couple of the songs had been stage tested, but three quarters of the albums were written in the studio or in the practice space and had never been played onstage in front of a bunch of people.  When you play songs in front of an audience you can work with it more to find out what sounds best, so with this album, there was a lot more work that went into making the song sound the best it could sound in the studio.  We figured it out on the studio as opposed to on the road, and I feel like that’s part of the different feel on this album.   I think Tony is right, though, in that this album definitely feels like one of our children

So, what’s next for The Beatings?  What do we have to look forward to hearing from you guys in the not-so-distant future?

ER: Shows!  We’ve talked about building a studio so that we wouldn’t have to be paying for studio time.  We also run our own label, which keeps everyone busy.  I don’t feel like this is a big explosion for us, this new album.  I feel like it’s another step in this progressing movement that we’ve started ten years ago.  I’m sure there’ll be touring next year; there’s always touring to be done.  There’s always label stuff to be done.  There’s always stuff we have to do for our music.  We’ll probably start writing the new album fairly soon.  It’s just more of the same, in that we’re gonna keep on hashin’ it out!