There was no shortage of young bands invoking the sounds of the ’90s in 2013, from blistering pop-punk to skuzzy indie-rock, but few arrived with the personality and talent of Potty Mouth. The four-piece from Northampton, Mass., released its debut full length album, Hell Bent, last year, and is planning its first full U.S. tour this coming spring. Singer/guitarist Abby Weeks and bassist Ally Einbender talked about preparing new music for the upcoming tour and their excitement to play SXSW for the first time.
The Daily Texan: Are you excited to come down for SXSW?
Abby Weems: We’re so excited for it. I think it’s going to be crazy and super fun.
Ally Einbender: Yeah, I’ve never been before and I’m just so excited to leave this polar vortex we’re in right now. It’s horrible here. It doesn’t stop snowing, and I never leave my house unless I go to work. I’m excited to have a real spring break.
DT: Are you working on any new music right now?
AW: We have a bunch of new stuff, and we’re actually recording a demo later today so we can pass it around at SXSW. We have five or six new songs already.
DT: Will the upcoming shows be mostly new songs?
AW: Yeah, I think we have so much new stuff. It’s split between that and songs from Hell Bent.
AE: I kind of feel conflicted about playing so much new stuff because I know that when I see a band I really like, in that moment I only care about seeing them play the stuff I know. When you see a band live, it’s so much about the experience, and you want to see the stuff you’re familiar with. But I think we all really like our new songs, and we’re trying to keep it balanced.
AW: We played a local show recently, and we thought it was OK to play a ton of new songs because everyone there had seen us a bunch of times and wouldn’t care if we played the old stuff they’d seen before. Then we realized for the U.S. tour, we’re going to cities we’ve never been to before on the West Coast and that people are going to want to see songs they know, so we’re trying to make that work.
DT: Your music gets compared to music from the ‘90s a lot, but where do you see the influences coming from for the songs you write?
AW: For me, when I first started learning guitar, I was going through a major Green Day phase. It just inspired me that their songs are so simple. It was reaffirming for being a new guitarist that you can write songs that are really simple but still catchy. As we’ve been touring more we’ve been playing with tons of new bands like Swearin, Radiator Hospital, Ovlov, Speedy Ortiz, and I think they influence me more than anything else. You get to know the people you’re playing with, and that makes me think about the music more.
