Camfield chats with Badflower ahead of Alterium Saturday, May 10 at the Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory.
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00:00josh is uh talking to us today about uh the fact that uh bad flower are going to be at um alterium
00:12and also they have a new album coming out but as uh you can see he is uh clutching a kitty cat i
00:17feel like we're posting a youtube video or something on tiktok for likes now with uh you
00:22know having having a cat there um it would probably be a good time josh to talk about the
00:26new song pause from bad flower seeing as it's pet related well as you can see these are my friends
00:34these are my these are my only friends um and that's that's kind of true i live um i live on a
00:41farm i'm here now out in the middle of nowhere come on kitty um typical cat wanting to be the star of
00:49this zoom conversation this one always wants to be the star um yeah and so i spend a lot of time
00:55around around my animals and not a lot of time around people and so when i first like
01:01when the the beginnings of the song first happened there were a couple words that popped in here and
01:06there and uh i didn't know immediately that the song was about animals it just hit at a certain
01:13point like i said a certain thing and i was like oh i know what this is which i think is really fun
01:18writing songs like you don't always know what your song is you're just kind of like channeling from
01:23something and then eventually the story of it kind of shows itself and and in a situation like this it
01:28was pretty exciting and also horrifying the thought and i guess you uh you're you're affected
01:35by your surroundings and you write about what you know so uh tell us a bit more about this farm that
01:40you live on in the middle of nowhere i mean is it is it a chosen remote remote location do you just
01:46like being out away from people and yeah did by animals because i guess you spend so much time on
01:51the road where you are just surrounded by people maybe uh in your downtime you want to just get
01:55away that's exactly right yeah half the year is spent being very social and i i'm not um by nature
02:01i'm not a very social person and so it's kind of an odd job that i have being on tour and doing the
02:06meet and greets and being in front of so many people and talking to so many people um which is
02:10fun i i'm really lucky that i get to do it but yeah when i'm not when i'm not doing that i like being
02:16alone yeah and what's it's kind of like you know do you ever have like the friend groups when you're
02:23in high school or middle school wherever you're like oh we're gonna be friends forever and one
02:26day we'll just buy a big we'll buy like a huge property and have like a commune and i feel like
02:30everybody has that dream and i just uh i kind of pulled the trigger on the idea and then i realized
02:36later oh i don't have any friends so it's just me it's just me on this commune with the animals
02:42what i don't know there is there is a kind of old school rock star notion that when you become
02:47successful you buy a farm that is what a lot of old school rock stars used to do back in the day
02:52so uh but i think they did it for outrageous parties so they could be in the middle of nowhere and no one
02:57would know what kind of level of debauchery was taking place you've obviously done it more for the
03:02peace and quiet right yes there were there has been one outrageous party here um in uh however many
03:10years i've been here now yeah nice and if it's that remote it's probably hard to find even with
03:15gps i mean do you have trouble with uh you know cell services and stuff like that when you get as far
03:19out as where you are no it's not that remote it's like it's in a farm town okay so it's yeah it's like
03:27uh yeah gps they'll take you here now the song paul's musically speaking we know it's about pets and
03:34sometimes dealing with uh the loss of pets it's kind of like a big emo anthem and i was also thinking
03:40that you know right now it seems to me that the early 2000s and that kind of original emo era is
03:46so in right a lot of bands from that era are back doing their biggest tours in a in a long time like
03:52were you thinking of that at the time were you kind of looking at the the sort of the emo resurgence and
03:57that was channeled into how this song ended up sounding no uh i try not to think about what's in and
04:05what's out um for me usually if i'm writing a song that's that's uh emotional on a level like this
04:13that really means something to me i i tend to go that direction i think because when i was growing up
04:19discovering music i was at the ripe age for emo to be like the thing yeah and uh and it's called emo
04:26because it's emotional and it was and i remember hit that stuff hitting me kind of like at the perfect
04:31time in my late teens and so now anytime i have those feelings i immediately revert to that and i
04:37don't think that's something that can ever change that's just like ingrained in me now if i feel
04:40emotional that's the kind of sound i imagine and so that's that's been true of a lot of our songs
04:45on our albums like a song like promise me kind of has that emo vibe and it's a really sad song
04:50yeah on the new album there's a song called detroit and there's one called london now you
04:57probably tell from my accent i'm actually from london even though i live in dallas now what i
05:01find interesting is the song detroit i know you wrote on the tour bus but it's not actually about
05:06detroit but the song london seems to have a resonance with the actual place and i and i want
05:12to know what was it about london that made you decide that you're going to write a song that is
05:17geographically about london whereas detroit is just named detroit because you happened to write
05:22that song while you were there yeah well i liked um i liked playing with the cockney rhyming slang
05:28stuff in the lyrics so i i knew i wanted to like that that was one of the first lyrics was was the
05:33trouble and strife line yeah and um actually initially the lyric was and we can leave the
05:39country tonight and i changed it so we can move to london tonight oh because i liked because i liked
05:45like i couldn't figure out exactly what's right in the verses and i realized i could take this whole
05:48direction with all these sort of nods to like london-y stuff big ben and whatever yeah um
05:54and also it's just it feels like um it's london is such a big city but for an american it's such an
06:00exotic place it's it's like it's quite foreign to us i mean most americans don't travel outside of
06:06the country i'm aware i know you guys do but we we don't and so yeah just it kind of feels like that
06:13dreamy thing like it's it's somewhere so far away and so different but also so big and grand
06:18i'm very impressed as well that you really grasped the notion of the cockney rhyming slang
06:24because as someone who comes from london and someone who my granddad has passed away now but
06:29when he was alive he would talk in cockney rhyming slang right so i've got that in my background
06:34but i've lived in america for a while now and i gotta tell you that when i watch say the the new
06:39guy ritchie thing on paramount or anything that guy ritchie does which is always got a rhyming slang
06:44in it even as a brit sometimes i watch and i go what did tom hardy just say like yeah yeah you're
06:50figuring out the cockney rhyming slang better than i am that's impressive oh thank you well my mom's
06:55from london oh okay i didn't yeah so i was introduced to to that pretty young and me like me and uh my
07:03best friend used to try to learn cockney rhyming slang when we were really young and talk to each other
07:07like that yeah go take a walk up the apples and pears well the apples and pears the thing with the
07:11cockney rhyming slang is sometimes it's easier to figure out because it'll just be two words that
07:15rhyme and apples and pears is stairs and some people yeah yeah what's cool about it is that
07:20that when you know it you don't use apples and pears you just say apples you just say the first
07:24yeah they don't they don't give you the word that actually rhymes with the word that it is they make
07:29it more harder right yeah but that's but that's what's cool about it i think that's what makes it like
07:34a fun secret language i think it's cool now i will say um you know as fun as uh london is to visit
07:40and uh the term exotic has been used to me by many americans about you know they like london
07:46this notion in the song that you want to move there you don't want to move there it's a great
07:50place to visit you know if you live there there's no free refills on coffee or soda and they hardly
07:55put any ice in drinks and customer service is almost non-existent just bear those things in mind
08:00can you imagine living in a world where when you go for breakfast you have to pay for every coffee
08:04because that's london yeah no your food's not great the indian food's good the indian food is
08:11great that's true yeah yeah yeah but apart from that you can't go all the way there just for indian
08:16food to live there permanently no that's true you know yeah no i wouldn't live there okay that's good
08:21correct answer if i if i would i that's where i would be yeah i'm american let's talk about um what
08:30people need to do at ulterium to impress you so you write a song about dallas oh i mean i don't know
08:38spot but you know you're going to be there at toyota music factory on may 10th playing our show
08:44and obviously you know this is to some extent detroit made uh an impression london's definitely made an
08:50impression what do the texans have to do in uh in dallas so that they're because what i want to see
08:56is the deluxe version of this album after the original version's out in june because it's too
09:02late for dallas now but everyone does a deluxe version these days you you're gonna have to come
09:06up with like three more songs anyway i'd like one of them to be called dallas okay but i don't get
09:13right on that if there's anything specific that the audience need to do to kind of uh inspire you further
09:18yeah i can't think of what they could possibly do to inspire me to write a song about after two
09:26city names to do a third well something really wild would have good things come in threes i feel like
09:34you know that's a thing maybe you know yeah but i think dallas is too close geographically it's it's
09:44too close to um detroit it's not actually close but like detroit london the next one has to be like
09:50shanghai it needs to be somewhere like way far away you know okay i gotta spread it out
09:55you gotta get on another continent what am i gonna do detroit grand rapids right yeah no i get it you
10:02need to go to a third continent to uh be more global in your dominance yes exactly um tell me the
10:09significance of you having a hammer in your mouth on the cover of the new album
10:14well um i i had the idea in my head i don't know why exactly the to me the hammer represents like the
10:27perfect tool for for construction and destruction and i like that about a hammer and sometimes that's
10:33how it feels internally um in my head i guess like i i am i i have the capability to construct
10:41something beautiful or destroy everything that i built and uh and i think the hammer is just like
10:47the perfect representation of that so i i definitely i knew i wanted to do something with a hammer and
10:51then in my head i was like i should just put it in my mouth and um i actually did and i i i had the
10:58idea and i had a photo shoot by myself before we had someone take the actual picture just to make
11:04sure it looks good right yeah i was like i want yeah i wanted to to make sure that that was going
11:09to be right and uh yeah i'm glad i like it if people haven't seen it the cover to no place like home is
11:15is on your website because you can pre-order the album now because it's because it's out in june and
11:20what i what i like about it is it's one of those images that's very striking in its simplicity and
11:26sometimes album covers end up becoming iconic because of that you know you're there you've
11:32got no shirt on it's basically just you and a hammer right so there's nothing that's dressed up
11:37there's no costume in terms of the way that you're dressed because effectively you're undressed
11:42and uh you know you think about just some album covers that are really simplistic and they and they
11:47and they kind of become iconic and we are in an era now when when people actually want everything
11:52as a physical product so i think you you know i saw that and i was like wow that's that's that's a
11:57really good image in terms of like uh just putting it out there because i feel like now for the first
12:02time in a long time album covers have come back to being more important yeah well if you say so i
12:08believe you i'm not paying attention well you're on your farm with your animals yeah yeah but i have you
12:16you know i have decent wi-fi um yeah i think uh album covers are really tricky it was because at
12:22first i i when we were thinking about it i was like i don't want to do i don't want to do a band
12:27shot we did the band shot on the last album but i also didn't want to do my face i was like that
12:32was the first album that one yeah um but yeah ultimately like it feels so wrong for our band to
12:41have a piece of artwork as the cover because the songs are so personal for the most part so i i
12:47always feel like that like you need to see the personality of the person responsible and so that's
12:52why yeah that's why that's important to us that is good well no place like home is coming out in
12:57we will see you at toyota music factory for ulterior on may 10th i appreciate you uh tearing yourself
13:05away from the animals and spending some time with us on zoom of course thanks for the chat
13:10see you soon thanks josh yeah bye