It’s been a huge year for Gold-Coast rock band, Double Lined Minority. Releasing their EP, Caught in the Ceasefire in February and sharing the stage with Motion City Soundtrack and As It Is, the band have been highly motivated musicians who have shared their catchy, punk influenced tunes around the country. Speaking with frontman, Eddie Salazar, he talks about the overall progression of the band, their sound influences and shares his insights on the current status of the pop-punk scene.
How has everything been so far for you guys?
This year has been our busiest year and I’d say it’s our favourite year because we’ve never released this many original songs in one year. The start of the year, we released an EP and also with that we released another single. Two months later, we started touring and 3-6 months later we released another two more songs. It’s been busy so it’s great because our fanbase has been building up as well.
You guys have been super busy and it’s really impressive to see you release new music as well as touring. I’ve noticed you supported Motion City Soundtrack and As It Is and that was probably exciting as well. What is it like touring with well-known names in the alternative rock/pop punk scene?
It was really surreal, especially for Motion City Soundtrack, Cameron [Griffiths] [guitar, vocals] and I, we’ve been listening to them since high school and it was a dream for us in the first place. I’ve seen them at Soundwave a couple of years ago and a couple of years later, we’re sharing the same stage; it’s just really surreal – there’s no other way to say it. We talked to them backstage after the show and they’re just really down-to-earth guys. It was a really humbling experience.
Yeah it’s crazy, especially touring with a band that you’ve listened to since high school and not expecting that to happen as well. Gauging from your EP as well, Caught In The Ceasefire, I found like a huge sound influence that was developed from Motion City Soundtrack. How did you guys develop the sound for this EP?
It developed from experimenting with different sounds because prior to our EP earlier this year, we had that label as the Blink-182 cover band. While growing up, Blink-182 was just a band that Cameron and I grew up with as well and we were both two singers and we liked covering the songs live and channel that into our music. However, that was the sort of label that we really wanted to get out of so we started listening to other bands. Listening to the local scene actually helped us a lot and sort of inspired me to write differently. It wasn’t intentional; it’s sort of trying something different.
Lyrically the EP is very descriptive and empowering. Obviously there was a lot of heartache and pain that you went through and you sort of channeled those energies through those songs. Did you feel like you were sort of letting go of the past essentially when you were writing them?
Pretty much. The one big difference with our old music and new music is that from older songs, it was sort of me imagining situations. One our first releases was a song called “Fireworks” and it’s about kissing a girl and by that time, I never even done that so it was just me imagining things. So the biggest difference this time round was writing from personal experiences and I sort of like doing that in diary way and so in a couple of months time I can look back at my music and go, ‘cool, I got through that.’ It’s something that stays in my history from now on.
Yeah, especially seeing that time gap as well because you released music in 2011. Obviously you see the maturity progression in the lyrics and that’s sort of rewarding for you as a musician. Do you read books or poetry to have that inspiration convey through your lyrics or is it mainly from personal experience?
It’s a combination of both, I guess. One thing that actually helped me a lot with songwriting was watching plays, like theatrics and all that. I think there’s a lot of poetry when it comes to theatre because whenever someone speaks, it has to sound good. Otherwise, even though they’re not singing and there’s lots of lines, I just end up taking my phone out while using some of the words that come out from those plays. It’s basically everything really – from the plays to movies. I don’t really try to look at other songs for lyric inspiration because I might accidentally steal a lyric [chuckles].
Yeah and obviously when you see a particular scene of like a sad movie or something like that, you sort of want to capture that feeling in your music as well. Like Her and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – those are really deep and sad movies and obviously you wanna portray that in your lyrics but in a unique way too. Has songwriting been a struggle for you in the past?
Writer’s block comes and goes here and there. But the thing that pushes us through with it anyway is life experience. When something happens in life, whether it’d be a loved one entering our life or losing one or even if it has to be as simple as or just an experience where it’s easy enough for me to write a couple of lyrics down, all I need is that realisation that those rough notes I make are worth writing a song out of.
Just the other week, I found out that one of our close friends got admitted to a mental ward and happened the same time as Mental Health Awareness week was happening. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s something I’d never knew a situation my own friends could ever be in.’ So stuff like that really pushes me to get through writer’s block and it doesn’t become more of a struggle – it’s more of a challenge that we’re capable of tackling.
Yeah of course and it’s life. Unexpected things happen so you never know what to expect. It’s moments like that which are really eye-opening and you probably want to write that down in like a song and try to capture that feeling and share it to the world. How do you feel knowing that your music is out there for the world to listen to? Now that local bands have more opportunity to share their music through social media while building an online presence.
I think it’s great that we get to sort of write stories and share it for everyone to listen to. Our music isn’t for everyone but for the people that it is for, I think it’s great because people can like sit down and just chill for a bit and say, ‘Hey, that’s relatable and I get that’. The same way when people get to listen to our stuff, I’d like them to share their own art on the internet. It’s great that we get to connect with anyone that we want to.
Yeah it’s pretty cool how proactive you guys are when it comes to social media. It sort of breaks down that barrier, especially with local bands because you get to interact with your fanbase and you get to know them a little bit more; what they like, what they don’t like. Nowadays, people idolise their favourite band and treat them like royalty but at the same time like you said, they’re just normal people. Obviously it enhances your communication too. Is it really exciting for you to release new music because you know that there’s hype surrounding it now that you have a loyal fanbase?
I wanna release music as much as possible and do it as often as I can. One thing that I’ve realised is we had a first CD release around 2011 and the next CD after that was 2013 and the next one was 2015 and I just thought, you know what, there’s too much of a gap in between these songs and that’s why I made sure that this year we’d release music as much as we could. So we had Caught in the Ceasefire and two singles after that and we did a cover song by Kanye West as well.
I don’t know many local bands who are doing this but it’s just a goal that I gave myself last year around December. Before 2015, I made a goal list to tour at least four times and release three songs after the EP and that’s exactly what we’re doing at the moment.
It’s rewarding to see how you set up goals. Normally once New Years come by, people set up ridiculous goals for themselves and never meet them. I think right now you sound really content and satisfied that you’ve been able to reach those goals. Do you feel like releasing new music for you consistently has garnered this loyalty from your fanbase?
I’d like to think it has because it comes from the shows as well. One thing that I was really worried about was the first tour after our EP because we had a Single launch tour after the EP three months later. I was thinking, ‘Oh, maybe half as much people will come because it’s just a Single launch and no one’s gonna care.’ But more people arrived for the Single launch tour so it’s slowly building and it has been for this year.
It’s really interesting to see that as well and for you to actually find the time too. How do you guys find time to make music constantly?
We’ve been doing this since high school but like there’s 24 hours in a day, it’s really nothing to sacrifice an hour to work with the band and this is something we wanna do for the rest of our lives.
Yeah and I guess it sort of helps because you guys live in the same area as well. It’s rewarding to see you guys step up from your high school days and continue doing this when before it was probably seen as something as an escape from your exams and assignments back then. Now it’s actually a job. What do you think about that?
At the same time, it feels like it’s happened in a blink of an eye. It’s crazy to think that we’ve been a band since 2009. Sometimes I feel like a veteran around the scene because being in this scene for so long, we’ve seen friends disband, become another band, change their name into something and we’ve had the same obscure name since 2009. I think it’s really rewarding because Cameron and I started this in 2009 and we sort of gave ourselves a promise to keep the same name and stay together for as long as we can and we have been with no dramas.
What would you say has been the biggest learning curve for you as a musician?
I think the biggest learning curve for us would be, the first two CDs that we first did, I produced it myself. With the EP that we released this year, I think it’s better than the last two because we had a third person in the studio, telling us to try different things and to not self-indulge in our own music for too long. Working with producer, Jared Adlam and was extremely helpful when it came to writing material for this year and this has made us become better songwriters and performers. I can’t even thank him enough because without that, we’d probably still be the same Blink-182 cover band [laughs].
I guess it helps to have someone there that has some experience and guide you through that process as well so you’re not like lost souls when making music. I see pop-punk bands go through music changes but it lacks experimentation. I feel like it’s been a stale music genre currently. Do you feel the same way as well about the overall pop punk scene?
When I hear some local band or even international band go for that generic pop-punk sound, I don’t think it’s genuine. They’re sort of like going after what’s trendy right now and have set up the mentality of saying: we have to use these words, we have to use this sort of pattern. As a band, we try to avoid being trendy by doing what worked best for the song and how meaningful and symbolic to was for us and see if people liked it.
I’ve reviewed so many pop punk records and stuff but I found something special in your EP and I think it’s great that you guys have been building your fanbase too.
Yeah. And following on your last question to, one of the big reasons actually why we have the whole image of the suits and tie is that we were doing this class and we were talking about how the punk movement came right after the hippie movement and how the fashion of punk was the exact opposite to what the hippies were wearing. So the hippies were wearing colourful clothes, really loose fashion with long hair and then the punks were wearing only black, skinny jeans etc. Around 2014, we were like, ‘What’s the pop-punk scene doing right now?’ and that’s where we came up with the idea of being the complete opposite to what they found trendy.
I guess you need that sort of catch in a band anyway because it’s important to stand out from the clone bands that are out there and to experiment with other genres and try to blend that in with pop-punk.
We listen to everything and the songs that we listen to aren’t necessarily the songs that we create as well. I was talking to someone on Facebook and they were asking me if I knew any of the Rap artists they were recommending me, and I told them that I listened to Rap/Hip-Hop before I got into Rock, funnily enough. I’m an all-rounded guy when it comes to music.
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Catch Double Lined Minority during their ‘Closure’ Tour. Tour dates can be found below!
Fri 20 Nov – The Producers Bar, Adelaide AA/LIC W/Doc Oc, Down With The Ship, Emergence, and Jordan Slattery
http://smarturl.it/ClosureAdelaide
Sat 21 Nov – Chatswood Youth Centre, Sydney AA
W/Skies Collide, Mail Day, Castles, and We Take The Night
http://smarturl.it/ClosureSydney
Sun 22 Nov – SUB Beanbag Gigs, Melbourne AA
W/Skies Collide, Ocean Bones, Cards After Midnight, and One More Weekend
http://smarturl.it/ClosureMelbourne
Fri 27 Nov – The Grid, Toowoomba AA
W/Interim and Mercury Sun
http://smarturl.it/ClosureToowoomba
Sat 28 Nov – The Lab, Brisbane AA
W/Skies Collide, Interim, and The Wisher & the Well
http://smarturl.it/ClosureBrisbane
Wed 2 Dec – The Brightside, Brisbane 18+
W/Never Shout Never (USA) and Forever Ends Here
Double Lined Minority’s new single “Closure” comes out November 16
Be sure to stay up to date with the band on Facebook.
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