The Home Team has a lot to celebrate right now. After kicking off the debut idobi Radio Summer School Tour earlier this week in Cleveland, OH, the four-piece heavy-pop act has officially launched their third studio album, The Crucible Of Life. And as the band has already told us, “Don’t be afraid to gеt loud” over their new 12-track collection.
Ahead of the idobi Radio Summer School Tour kickoff, we sat down with The Home Team in Cleveland, OH, as drummer Daniel Matson led the chat about the new album. You can check out a preview of the interview and watch the full accompanying video below.
DANIEL: What was the most challenging part of recording this album?
RYAN OLSON: Metronome.
Read more: The Home Team Debuts Unreleased “Love & Co.” In Cleveland
BRIAN BUTCHER: [Laughs.] When we went in to record this album, it was shortly prior to our headliner tour last year… We went to LA for this big writing trip, and we were down there for five weeks, and we wrote pretty much the whole time. By the time we reached the end, we definitely weren’t completely done with the album—we had a skeleton of everything done—but we then realized we are not a typical band. We don’t write as fast as everybody else. And so, we spent the next nine months finishing the album. We made the skeleton in five weeks, but we spent a long time making sure it was up to our standard.
During that time we were touring the hardest tours we’ve ever done. We did two back-to-back tours, one of which was the headliner which was seven people in a van and we were doing our own VIP, we were setting up our own lights every day. It was extremely hard, it was a very hard tour. It was a very rewarding tour, but all of this is happening while we have the pressure of, “We have to make the most important record of our lives.”
That was mostly because there were so many more people involved in it, it is a very specific time in our career, and there was just a lot riding on it. And we didn’t have a lot of space or time to make sure everything was going well. But, through all of that, that hardship, I think we did make an exceptional album. I love that it made us so much more sure of who we are as musicians and who we are as songwriters. But it was, overall, really difficult navigating all of that.
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JOHN BARAN: …The hardest part for me—and I’m not gonna name names because I love this person very dearly—this person told me, “John, don’t go down to LA with any songs ready. No riffs. Just go. I don’t want you to be attached to anything.” I said, “Shoot, that makes sense to me!”
Go down there and the first person we write with says, “Alright, you wanna show me what you got?” Nothing. Well luckily, we had some very old demos, like stuff that was even prior to even Slow Bloom. Stuff that we were still very partial to… You write so many demos, and you’re like, “Ehh, for a rainy day.” The rainy day hadn’t come for a while, and the rainy day came. And I was like, “Thank you past John for doing this and being productive back then.”
So that was really hard. Like you said, we wrote this in five weeks. We wrote from scratch, almost the bones, in five weeks. When I think about that, it blows my mind…
Read more: Magnolia Park Welcomes Us Into “The Void” On Unreleased Track
RYAN: I’m going to try to turn a negative into a positive because I think one of the most difficult things that we did was adapt. And we did really well at adapting. After Slow Bloom released, there was a lot of change within The Home Team. A lot of changes in our camp and our team. There were just so many more moving pieces [and we were] doing so many things out of our comfort zone. It was very challenging, but we came out on top and we came out very aligned in the vision of the band.
The Home Team is slated to act as a rotating headliner across the debut idobi Radio Summer School Tour alongside Scene Queen, Stand Atlantic, and Magnolia Park, with Honey Revenge and Letdown. as support. They are also scheduled to support Neck Deep in the U.S. in the fall before performing a series of sold-out headlining shows overseas. Check out the full touring schedule below and grab tickets here. You can also enter for a chance to win FREE tickets by downloading the idobi Radio here.
Tour Dates:
- July 12—Nashville, TN @ Marathon Music Works ^
- July 13—Sauget, IL @ (St. Louis) Pop’s Nightclub ^
- July 16—Austin, TX @ The Far Out Lounge ^
- July 17—Dallas, TX @ SouthSide Music Hal ^l
- July 18—Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live ^
- July 20—Orlando, FL @ The Vanguard ^
- July 21—St. Petersburg, FL @ Jannus Live ^
- July 22—Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade Heaven ^
- July 23—Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore ^
- July 25—Philadelphia, PA @ Franklin Music Hall ^
- July 26—Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE ^
- July 27—Sayreville, NJ @ Starland Ballroom ^
- July 28—Worcester, MA @ The Palladium ^
- July 30—Chicago, IL @ Concord Music Hall ^
- July 31—Royal Oak, MI @ Royal Oak Music Theatre ^
- Aug. 2—Omaha, NE @ The Admiral ^
- Aug. 3—Kansas City, MO @ Uptown Theater ^
- Aug. 4—Oklahoma City, OK @ Diamond Ballroom ^
- Aug. 6—Denver, CO @ The Fillmore Auditorium ^
- Aug. 7—Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex ^
- Aug. 9—Seattle, WA @ The Showbox SoDo ^
- Aug. 10—Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater ^
- Aug. 13—Sacramento, CA @ The Backyard ^
- Aug. 15—Tempe, AZ @ The Marquee ^
- Aug. 16—San Diego, CA @ SOMA ^
- Aug. 17—Anaheim, CA @ City National Grove ^
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- Oct. 7—Tampa, FL @ Jannus Landing
- Oct. 8—Columbia, SC @ The Senate
- Oct. 9—Huntsville, AL @ Mars Music Hall
- Oct. 11—Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
- Oct. 14—Wichita, KS @ The Cotillion
- Oct. 15—Albuquerque, NM @ The Sunshine Theater
- Oct. 22—Vancouver, BC @ The Vogue Theater
- Oct. 24—Calgary, AB @ MacEwan Hall
- Oct. 25—Edmonton, AB @ Union Hall
- Oct. 28—Des Moines, IA @ Val Air Ballroom
- Oct. 29—Milwaukee, WI @ The Rave
- Oct. 30—Grand Rapids, MI @ The Intersection
- Oct. 31—Toronto, ON @ The Queen Elizabeth
- Dec. 7—Glasgow, UK @ Cathouse
- Dec. 8—Leeds, UK @ The Key Club
- Dec. 10—Manchester, UK @ Rebellion
- Dec. 11—Birmingham, UK @ O2 Institute 2
- Dec. 12—Bristol, UK @ Thekla
- Dec. 13—London, UK @ The Underworld
^Peforming on the idobi Radio Summer School Tour.
