THE B FOUNDATION INTERVIEW
When you are a band in demand you spend a lot of time in the van. Fortunately for us, Jason Moorehead, bass player for The B Foundation, managed to fit in a visit to The Pier, amongst his extremely busy tour schedule. This Pasadena four-piece toured the West Coast of the USA extensively in 2007 and now the band's playing circuit widens with an upcoming visit overseas to Japan. Let's get the lowdown.
The Pier: You must be stoked for your first international tour to Japan? How did that come up and what are you most looking forward to about visiting there?
Jason: We first released the song Costa Mesa for the One Big Family compilation over there. It was a cool CD with the likes of Sublime, Long Beach Dub, The Ziggens, Chapter 11 and more. Surfrock International then signed us and released our first album The Deep End and that was the second album they released as a label back in 2006. Once we decided to release our newest record Trouble Standing with them we figured the best thing possible to increase sales and overall promotion of The B Foundation in Japan would be to go and bring the people the live show.
We have been fortunate enough to have cool sponsors and the label itself to help us get our feet wet over in Japan and we are all super stoked to get over there and go nuts. I’m most excited about soaking up a foreign culture. They have style, surf, sushi, and beer in vending machines! What else could you want? They also expect all our shows to sell out and with our album coming out in December they will have plenty of time to learn all the words before April.
The Pier: Real nice, but first up you have a West Coast Winter Tour with The Expendables and Josh Fischel. That is an awesome line-up. You must be expecting these shows to be something special?
Jason: The winter tour shows are going to be great. We really like the combo of The Expendables and The B Foundation. Both bands bring great energy on stage and the kids are super reciprocal. It’s also great to be touring with our friends and at the same time a band that we really respect musically. Those guys bring the house down every night.
Josh is also a guy we look up to in this business. A lot of bands fizzle away over time and Josh has kept pursuing what he loves most. I loved Bargain Music and it will be great to have him be a part of the tour. It will be a little change up for the fans going from an acoustic set to The B Foundation, but we’ve just packed some high energy stuff towards the front of the set to get it rockin’. I can’t wait to kick this thing off.
The Pier: So who would you like to tour with that you haven't had the opportunity to yet?
Jason: Are we being practical here or should we shoot for the roof? I would love to do a tour with NOFX! One of my personal favorite bands, but I’m not sure if they’d be down since their like 75 and whatnot……they are still way more punk rock than us anyday. Realistically it would be dope to get to do a tour with 311 and/or Incubus. A B Foundation, Expendables, Slightly Stoopid tour would be rad too. I think we would probably black out a lot on that tour. Which is always interesting.
The Pier: You played a lot of gigs in 2007. Was there one that was particularly memorable? For example, the video from Spring Break show (just below) looks like a pretty amazing time.
Jason: Yeah that trip to San Felipe was pretty cool. We did spend a lot of hours drinking Mexican tequila, so I wouldn’t use the word memorable. It was super cool to do three shows out there with three different groups of kids all partying super hard. S.W.A.T. knows how to throw a good spring break trip.
To tell you the truth, my personal favorite show of the whole year was at The House of Blues in Hollywood. We had just gotten the KROQ buzz going and we headlined the HOB on a Monday night and the venue gave us 300 free tickets to give away. We also did and on air interview with KROQ the night before the show. It went off. We were able to hook up a bunch of fans with free tickets and got to play at one of our favorite places to play in the country. We got to hear everyone singing all the words to Spliffed nice and loud. It was a cool show.
The Pier: Yeah guys got some great exposure on KROQ this year. What was it like hearing your song being played on the radio and KROQ no less?!
Jason: The love we got from Kat Corbit and KROQ was sick. I grew up in Los Angeles and spent most of my life listening to KROQ. It is the biggest radio station in the country for “alternative” music and a pillar of California style for sure. Words can’t really explain what it’s like hearing your hard work get aired over the airwaves, especially on a station like that.
KROQ also put out a Fall Compilation which included the song Spliffed and in late December they did a top songs of 2007 show on their Locals Only show in which they also featured Spliffed. KROQ also added Spliffed to their request lines due to the overwhelming response from our fans calling the station. They also worked the song Rincon in over the summer. It is such a great feeling to have not just one song but two being played on the radio in Los Angeles.
The Pier: When you originally put the band together did you ever think this was something you could be doing full time in the future? Was that always the goal?
Jason: When we first started playing together in 2001 it was more of like a couple guys just drinking beers and playing cover songs in a garage. Once we played a party and started writing original songs I never looked back. I personally have always strived to make The B Foundation a band that could survive and be a real band that toured the country. We never thought we’d be driving around in Limos and whatnot, but we did know that we could maybe pay our bills and not have to work dead end jobs. We have put in a lot of time and hard work too.
I would be lying if I said that we didn’t think we were going to make it “big” when we were younger, but as we grew up more as musicians and people in this industry we got a better idea of how to survive in this business. We saw other bands around us and how they succeeded through touring and building a grassroots fanbase in a bunch of different markets. So we have done the same and have been able to reach out to our fans in a lot of different areas. The Eek-A-Mouse tour we did helped us out a lot, we got to bring our sound to a bunch of new faces in many different markets. Places we are now getting to go back and headline.
The Pier: For me personally I thought Trouble Standing was a huge leap in progress from The Deep End. Now that you have had time to digest the creation of both and how they were received, how do you feel about how Trouble Standing turned out?
Jason: We had some goals when producing/writing the Trouble Standing record. We almost didn’t want to sell The Deep End record anymore. It came to be like it was an unfair representation of who we were as a band. When we wrote the majority of The Deep End we were a three piece band. In between those two albums we had gotten a new drummer who helped us grow and we also got another guitar player who helped us develop a new sound. It seems as if we were begging for the opportunity to record Trouble Standing. We were playing the majority of the songs live and it was obvious that we were growing as a band.
We were stoked that the label in Japan wanted to release The Deep End, but we weren’t even really shopping it around in America due to its lack of “bfoundation”. So I guess we agree with you completely in regards to TS we love it. It’s The B Foundation. We could have done it as a self titled album at that point. It was a great representation of who we were at that time.
One of my personal goals with TS was that it be listenable from beginning to end. I really appreciate an album that you can put on and listen to every track. Not fast forward through stuff or just have one or two good songs. I feel we accomplished that with TS and we’ve been touring on it for two years almost. I just hope that we can bring the same leaps and bounds with our third album which we’re writing now. It's going to be good……..we’re getting weird and taking the “bfoundation” sound to another level.
The Pier: Jason, you produced Trouble Standing, what was it like taking on the production role and were you comfortable with it?
Jason: All the members of the band had roles in producing the album. I got the producer credit because I was there every single minute of the recording process. It would be unfair to take all the credit because we had a great engineer and everyone put their thoughts in on the record. I could see myself doing production in the future. I can’t even listen to music without dissecting it in my brain. Patrick (vocalist/guitarist) too has a great ear for this kind of stuff and will be another big part in the new album, production wise.
The Pier: You mentioned the next album. Do you have any plans to record in 2008 and what can you tell us about the new songs you may be currently working on?
Jason: We do……we do have a large amount of time dedicated to touring right now because we have the Japan tour lined up, a trip to Hawaii, and UK tour for July. We have a few songs that we have been testing out live and I’m proud to say that they are going over wonderfully.
We have a new song called, The Cure that is winning crowds over every night. It’s a great tune with a good message and its one of my favorite songs to play. It’s another one of those songs that you can’t hang a name tag on. We’ve learned that stand out in the scene you have to develop your own sound. We think we’ve done that and look to improve on our authentic sound with our third full length album. Now if we can just get some time to record it!
The Pier: Is there one B Foundation song that you are most of proud of? Whether it be just musically or the way it may have had an impact?
Jason: For me personally I’d have to say that I’m most proud of Say it in Sin. I may be biased though because I wrote most of that tune, but its also the most bought song on iTunes and I feel that its another great representation of who we are as a band. Some of our newer songs too are awesome, but then again they are new so who knows if the feeling will ever wear off.
I think the song The Cure will be the song we’re most proud of when its done doing whatever songs do.. .I’m also proud of The Fast Lane because it was one of the first songs we wrote for Trouble Standing and I still get chills when we it goes off perfectly live…I’m proud of all our songs, you can never take a song away from a band. It will always be there. Different songs affect different people in different ways, we hope that each song we’ve done can touch people.
The Pier: What is the craziest experience, that you are comfortable to share, that has happened to you through being in B Foundation?
Jason: I still am not sure what to let out here!!!! We’ve had our fun. We’ve partied hard with the best of em. SWAT Spring Break was pretty cool, the stage was filled with college girls dancing all over us. The stage manager guy was so pissed off, he was yelling at the girls and us to get them off the stage and the girls were like FU. It was super cool. We’ve also had some pretty gnarly evenings in Reno, in which I don’t remember much of. We’re not allowed to play at a few places any more.
The Highlands in Hollywood, The Sands Hotel in Reno, we’ve been screamed at at The Knitting Factory in Hollywood for having our fans all rush the stage and ruin their equipment. I’m also pretty sure that we’re never allowed back to a Dennys in San Jose. We’re pretty normal we just get caught at the wrong place at the wrong time all the time.
The Pier: Haha nice. There are a lot of bands coming up in the reggae rock scene right now (I guess that's why we created The Pier) do you have any that are personal favorites?
Jason: Speaking for myself only here… I like The Expendables, Dirty Heads, we just got the chance to see Passafire while they were in LA and I thought those guys were pretty dope, I like Knockout, Meet me at the Pub, and Livitz Livitz from Reno. At the same time all these guys are our friends pretty much so it even makes it feel better to support these bands. I think Ballyhoo will make another good record too. Oh yeah and Dying to Live by Diego Roots is a great song.
The Pier: What else have you got coming up in 2008 that you want to share?
Jason: 2007 ended in a whirlwind, our guitar player had a baby, we released a record in Japan, and toured the country with bands we respect and on our own. 2008? Double it…. Except for the baby part. Wrap it up. We’re going to Japan, Hawaii, and Europe. We’re very happy where we are and we hope to deliver to the fans each night.
Big thanks to Jason for taking his time to provide such great and indepth responses. Make sure you check out: