We join Telltale on the road from a car park in Philadelphia to chat with vocalist John Carteret & bassist Tim Fogg on their latest self-titled album which is out now!.
by Felix Bartlett | May 17, 2023
Where are you both calling from today?
Timmy: We’re outside of Philadelphia and we’re in a mall parking lot right now. We’re currently on tour right now, so we just had some downtime and figured why not chat and catch up and see what’s going on?
Nice one, how are you finding the current tour?
Well, it’s been pretty good so far. Lots of new crowds for sure. Lots of old fans coming out, too, which has been nice. But it’s been cool to see the different interactions with the new songs that we’ve been playing and everything else.
The venues have been some great! Some of them have bigger than others, you know, some have nicer rooms and everything, but overall, just been you know, a lot of fun and just everybody’s been very nice. So it’s been a really good tour for sure.
For readers who haven’t heard of Telltale I wanted to discuss how the band came to be and talk about their roots and their formation into the East Coast juggernauts they are today.
Timmy: Essentially we formed in late 2017. We all used to play in various metal and pop-punk bands around the Virginia area and essentially all those kind of fizzled out at the same time. So we all decided to start a new project. And, you know, that’s kind of, I don’t know, it’s kind of like a not a supergroup of like local bands, but it’s like a hand-picked quartet of people from these past bands.
John: We all moved through so many different bands back in the day so the list goes on and on. The whole Central East Coast music scene in the States is very, very collaborative, I guess you could say. So, you know, I played bass in like two different bands. I screamed in two other bands, and then some of them at the same time. I think everybody just moved around so much that it’s all kind of a blur.
So it’s quite it’s quite a tight-knit community round around the East Coast, you would say?
John: Yeah, I’d say it’s like pretty tight. I mean, everybody kind of knows each other in the Virginia scene. Everybody’s close and DIY and punk and everything, so we know pretty much every band coming up or any musicians and we try and nurture and help people out when we can. When bands kick off, we try and be as supportive as we can.
That’s one cool thing about Virginia though if you’re from from that area, then everybody’s going to rock with you and you know, put on for you. So it’s, it’s pretty cool. Pretty cool spot.
John: Yeah. Timmy actually ran a DIY booking company back in the day. So a lot of those connections helped start our career as a band just because, you know, we knew so many people already from those DIY days so where other bands started getting their roots in place and moving up with the industry, so to speak. We could kind of tag along with them.
Nice that’s wicked. It’s so good to hear that the community is kind of thriving over the pond, as it were.
Looking back on that, can you share how that journey has influenced your new self-titled album?
John: The new record we’re putting out is basically an encapsulation of our entire band’s influences put into ten tracks. We all grew up in the hardcore and the metalcore scene, but at the same time we all enjoy Fall Out Boy and bands like Blink 182. So we kind of combined all those sounds and influences together, added some more modern influences like ‘The Weekend’, ‘The 1975’ are artists we enjoy now and yeah, it’s just a very encapsulating collection of things that just describes who we are.
The first track of the record talks about how we began and how the whole band came together. So yeah, it’s ten tracks of encapsulating what Telltale is. And that’s why we self-titled the record as well, because we felt like it was such a reflection of who we are. And we wanted to display that by just having a self-titled album.
“I think it’s been long overdue. Truthfully. We put out a couple of different EP’s. I think we have three EPs out, but it just felt like the right time.“
Looking back at the string of EP’s you’ve released leading up to this, can you share how you all have changed over that period?
Timmy: Yeah, it’s kind of funny. Tim was mentioning that the first song on the LP is kind of a reflection back on our story so far, almost sort of like a Prolog, I feel like. And for the few people that we’ve shown the record to, they’ve talked about how the first song sounds a lot like our older stuff, but everything else seems to be moving in this new direction and that’s exactly the point. It’s a prologue. We want it to bring everybody up to speed on us and our music. And then from there, the record departs into newer things that we’re more interested in as far as style and writing references. I think we touched a little bit back more on our roots as people we all grew up with. Such as our dads listening to the rock radio stations in the car Our dad is like listening to like, you know, the rock radio stations in the car, listening to the rock radio announcer who does “We’re on station one point two, and we play nothing but rock!”.
And we took that to heart. We wanted to write a rock record. So it still has those sentiments of pop-punk to it, for sure. But we really wanted to do a true rock record in our own style, so to speak.
And why now?
John: I think it’s been long overdue. Truthfully. We put out a couple of different EP’s. I think we have three EPs out, but it just felt like the right time. I mean, we’re all more mature now and we can convey what we want to say through music a lot better than maybe we could a couple of years ago. So it was just time for a proper release.
We’ve got it coming out on vinyl, which is the first time we’ve ever done vinyl. And just felt like the right move for us right now.
And how has the recording process changed with this growth?
Timmy: We’ve learned to do a lot more on our own on the recording side of things, just as far as going out and writing without the need to have somebody else in the room with us, which I think mainly comes from a sense of self-confidence where before, we would go into the studio with just a 32nd riff here, a 32nd riff there, just one big vocal line for the chorus or four stanzas of lyrics and write entirely off of just that. This time around we had roughly 20 finished demos when we went into the room we had pretty much fully built the tracks and everything. So I think knowing exactly what we wanted is really what made this record different. Whereas before we went in with like a little bit of uncertainty as to exactly who we wanted to be this time. This time we we were like okay, this is Telltale this is what we want to write as a group.
Is there a standout track on the album for you?
John: I think the beauty of this record is that if you listen to the whole thing, like front to back, you can get a very broad picture of what our band is. There’s different types of tracks on the album. Like there’s a shoegaze type one, there’s a rap rock one. But overall I think once someone were to listen to the whole album they would be able to understand who we are as a band. We kind of modelled it after other bands that have done something similar where we thought their branding and deeming was just solid overall. Boston Manor is an example with their album, ‘Welcome To The Neighbourhood’ which for me is an incredible record where you can hear from the first song what it’s going to be like through the beat their band is. So we went for that type of style of thing where this is who we are, this is what this is what the songs are.
Continuing with the new album which track has been the best to play live?
Timmy: I like playing ‘Otherside’, which is the first single that came out from the rollout. I just think it’s a really cool song. Musically it’s just really fun to play, so I’d probably go with that one. How about you, John?
John: I’d agree. It’s funny, we put that single out first and then inevitably decided to make it the first song in our set for this tour. So it opens everything up for new people to experience us live in the same way that, it was the first song that people could experience from this album cycle. So I think it’s a really good point to jump off which I love.
Seeing as you’re on the road right now, I’d love to ask if you can share any insane stories you may have experienced while on tour.
John: We’ve been playing with this band. So this really isn’t even our own story. But, you know, sometimes it’s the people that you’re with not so much your own camp on tour because you’re keeping your head down. But there is this band we were out with called ‘Silly Goose’. That is just absolutely nuts to watch live. And there was one night where they had the audience crowd surf a table to the stage when they picked up a table from the bar area and surfed it upfront. Just watching that, I was like, okay, cool. Clearly, I need to like, pick up my own stage antics and get people to be a little bit crazier because it is possible to do it with crowds that are coming out to these shows.
So like Sky’s the limit. If you can get them to crowd, surf a table, you can probably get them to do almost anything. So like how high? Let’s go.
You’ve got to start to make this a thing. Try and find the most crazy thing that you can crowd stuff to the stage.
I like that. Well, let’s start, like, looking for objects in the venue beforehand.
How about go out in true pop-punk fashion and get someone to crowd surf some pizza up?
John: I don’t know if we’re playing any venues that are like combo pizza spots, but honestly, that would be that would be pretty cool. Just like serve the pizza to stage. We can all grab a slice and act out the set like we’ve done.
“If you can get them to crowd surf a table, you can probably get them to do almost anything“
Timmy: This is such a good question. It’s ironic because last year we played 2000 Trees and the day we played Bullet For My Valentine was headlining, and that’s like one of my all-time favourite bands. They were one of the reasons I got into music. So that was like a super full circle moment. So, I’m going to throw them on there just because I love them. Next would be System of a Down. I just saw that they headlined Sick New World and we were all in the van on setlist fm looking up what the setlist was like, “Oh my God, what did we miss?”. And they played all of ‘Toxicity’ in full. So that would probably be on my lineup for sure just because what an experience that would be. I’ve never seen them live. Then I was going to say either Bring Me The Horizon or Iron Maiden, either one of those bands. I know they have completely different sounds, but I feel like they both have incredible stage setups.
Looking ahead what’s next for you guys?
Timmy: So we’re going to wrap up this tour here and then our record comes out Friday the 17th, which we’re super excited about it.
John: We’ve got a couple of album release shows and stuff here in August, but other than that, we’ve got some things in the works, planning on coming back across to your side of the world, maybe in January or so. But yeah, just trying to piece things together, kind of see what, see what fits and just trying to see what the reaction is of the record in general.
I don’t know what the future holds necessarily, but I’m excited to see what people think once they hear the full album.
Epic, just to finish things off any last minute shout-outs?
Timmy: Big up to 408 for taking us out on this run they’re a super sick very nostalgic pop punk band to watch them every night and hear the sound and the music I grew up listening to, has been fucking sweet.
So yeah, big thanks to those guys. But besides that, you know, thanks to our label for putting out this record and thanks to anybody who listens to it, I’m really excited to see the feedback from everybody.
John: I’m going to shout out Knock Loose. Their record comes out tonight. We just saw them play with Luther here over in the States so shout out to those bands.
And thanks to you for having us!
Anytime dudes can’t wait to catch you over here!
Telltale’s self-titled album is out May 17th via Rude Records
Listen to the album below:
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