Editor’s Note: After a fantastic show at Vamp’d (see our review, link at end of article), Gavin is still out on the road but took some time to talk with ZRockR’s Mary Bodimer about things that interest him most- so get to know Gavin now cuz this guys is gonna blow up and thank god for that. We need real music out there!
Mary: To start, what was your inspiration to start your band?
Gavin: My inspiration to start my band, I mean, it’s hard. I kind of just fell in love with the music.
I know it sounds cliche, but I didn’t want to do music my whole life. You could ask anybody. I’ve always wanted to be in the entertainment industry. As far as movies, and acting, and directing, and stuff like that. I took acting lessons, and directing, and producing, and editing classes. That’s what I wanted to do my whole life. But around my junior and senior year, I really kind of fell in love with the music. COVID hit my senior year. We all had time to kind of figure out what we all wanted to do. All my friends that wanted to go to college took a gap year.
COVID was like a blessing and a curse; definitely a curse for most people, but for people in my generation that weren’t really affected in the negative ways, it kind of gave us an opportunity to kind of sit and reflect on ourselves.
Then I took the time to learn how to sing. Me and my dad recorded our first song together. It was called “Favorite Songs.” When we put it out, everybody was like, you need to put a live band together. So, I spent months and months trying to put together a good group of young, energetic, adrenaline- pumping, I guess you could say, “band of kids”. We’ve got some new members since that first show and lost a couple. I think right now the lineup we have is really the best we’ve had. So, it was kind of a journey getting from that point. But like I said, to go back full circle, I naturally found my way into loving the music.
Mary: I’m glad COVID had a positive spin for you. Because like you said, a lot of people, it wasn’t.
Gavin: I know. I’ve got to word that very carefully. I’ve had family members and relatives that have been affected by deaths of COVID. A lot of my dad’s friends have died from COVID. So, I’ve got to be very careful. I’m not saying it was a positive thing, but it definitely gave a lot of people an opportunity to kind of sit back and come to life and realize a lot of things about themselves.
Mary: For sure. With all that being said, who are your musical influences?
Gavin: Definitely when I started, it was a whole lot of that 80s hard rock stuff, the late 80s stuff, a lot of your Poison, Bon Jovie… I guess you could say the in-your-face hair metal bands, the Motley Crues and all that. But as of recent, I’ve been trying to widen my horizons. And I’m definitely influenced by some of the 2000s bands and some of the 70s too. It was really just kind of beginning a lot of that from ‘83 to ‘91, those bands. But now it’s like I’m a big Aerosmith guy now. Obviously, I’ve always been a big Van Halen guy, but a lot of the earlier stuff now. Then also going to the 2000s stuff, this is where I’ve got to be careful too. I’ve gotten into some Nickelback a whole lot too. I know a lot of people don’t like Nickelback.
Mary: I don’t know why.
Gavin: Nickelback, I’ll say it a million times, man. They’re like the 2000s version of Poison. I’ll explain it because a lot of their songs are very tongue-in-cheek and about girls or having a fun time or some shit like that. They’ve got their heavy songs like “Burn It to The Ground” and Poison has “Look What The Cat Dragged In”. They also have their ballads like “Every Rose.”. Then they also have their fun dance songs. They’re on the bass like “Unskinny Bop” and they have “Animals” or something like that. So, I compare them a whole lot to a heavier 2000s version of Poison. I’ve gotten a lot into Nickelback. I just went and saw Creed the other day live with Three Doors Down. Let me tell you, Mary, when they played “One Last Breath”, it was like a spiritual awakening. Like I said, it started with a lot of those seven years that I liked in the 80s. But it’s kind of gotten wider now. I’ve been inspired by all walks of music.
Mary: That’s good. I think that gives you more of a unique sound when there’s a variety of different bands, genres, things like that. It broadens your style more. So, what is your process for creating new music?
Gavin: I’ll kind of come up with an idea. I know what I want a song to be before I lay down any lyrics or I’ll have my band members come up with instrumentals. The very first thing is the idea of the song. We have our set list right now. Our set list is half covers, half originals. Sometimes it’s mostly covers. We won’t ever do a four-hour bar band set type of thing like that. We’ll stick with our 40 minutes to an hour and 15 minute kind of set. I’ll structure our set with covers in this way that I feel like the pacing works. I’m like, oh, I love this song here or that song there. I’ll create the perfect set in my image. Then I’ll think, the more originals we create, I’m like, you know what, we need this type of a song. Not like, let’s just say it’s “Still the Night”. I’m like, oh no, let’s not rip off “Still the Night”. What’s the vibe that “Still the Night” gives? Let’s put that vibe into an original song. I’ll be like, okay, this next song that we need, I want it to be this adrenaline-pumping song. Then I’ll make a chart of things that I could write about. Do I write about literal
adrenaline things, like literal things that give us adrenaline, or do I write about more metaphorical ideas? If I’m doing real things that give adrenaline, then I’ll write a pie chart, or not a pie chart, just a chart of things like, oh, fast cars, oh, loud guitars, oh, being on stage, this, that.
Then I’ll write out a bunch of ideas that I could write lyrics from, but before the lyrics come, I will know what I want it to sound like based off the idea. If I’m thinking, “oh, this song is about adrenaline”, then I know, okay, the guitar’s got to sound like this, and it’s got to make you bang your head, and I need this guitar riff to whip like this, and these drums to kick, snare, kick, snare, and I need it to sound like a big gang chorus and stuff like that.
Same thing for my new song, “Young Wild and Free.” I knew that it needed to be a summer song, so before I even wrote the lyrics, we knew that the song needed to have this kind of vibey, not too fast, not too slow kind of tempo, and what the song needed to be about, and then you bring the other guys in, and I put the lyrics in, and it just kind of comes together like that, but the very first thing you do is come up with the idea that you want your song to be, and everything kind of comes together after that.
Mary: I love that. It’s a very well-thought-out process, but I like how you come to it with
your original set list idea, and that, I love that.
Gavin: Yeah, I mean, I have a million ideas for ballad-y stuff and slow songs, but it’s like, I think of the pacing of our set first, because it’s like, right now, I can’t put two or three ballads in a set. Right now, I need like, oh, our set needs an adrenaline song, or our set needs a summer song. It needs a bass-heavy dance song or something like that. So, it’s like, that’s my process. I know what kind of a song I need, and then it just kind of branches out from there. I love that.
Mary: So, I know you were just here in Vegas, and you were on tour. What is your most memorable moment while touring?
Gavin: Specifically to this run?
Mary: Any time.
Gavin: Ah, man, that’s hard because, you know, not that it’s all starting to blend together now, but the more shows we do, the less defining they are. You know, I definitely think, we played at a festival down in Key West called “Rock Island Festival”, and that was so awesome.
Usually, you know, a band at my level pays to play. They pay for exposure, and it’s all promotion. Movies pay millions of dollars in promotion. Sometimes you just pay to play. We’re lucky that we don’t have to do it that much. The level that we’re at, the fact that they put us in this five-star resort for a whole week, and we got to play with all of our favorite bands, and we got paid a whole lot of money, and free food and everything. That’s the shit that a kid dreams of, you know, being a rock star.
All the luxuries like that. Not that we don’t always get that, but there’s a lot that comes with the job. It’s not just being a rock star. It’s a job that you have to do, and it requires lots of hard work and lots of money. I mean, we obviously played in two venues over on the West Coast. Those two venues didn’t pay us the amount that it costs to fly a whole band out. After renting cars and hotels, and the fucking pricing of everything over on the West Coast, that makes no sense. Why is it triple the price? All that the flights and everything come out to be around $5,000. Obviously, the venues, they’re not going to be $5,000,
so there’s a lot that comes with doing these gigs and kind of paying the play.
Even if we don’t necessarily pay the venue to play like most bands, it still costs us money to travel. So, we have a lot of good memories. Even the day after we played The Whiskey, we just spent the whole day at Santa Monica and just hanging out as a band.
Those are fun memories. That should be the number one answer, but I think I might have to put Key West at the very top. Even when we played Vegas the other day, the night before, none of my band members have been to Vegas. I have several times going on tour with my dad, but just walking around with them down the entire strip, going to the Bellagio. I don’t know if you’re a Sammy Hagar fan, but we went to Cabo Wabo. Things like that are just priceless memories.
Mary: So, I think you touched on something really important on there. With all that being
said, what advice would you give to someone wanting to become a professional
musician?
Gavin: First off, don’t. Second off, you have to be committed. There’s no half-assing shit. The biggest thing you’ll learn is, again, another thing I’ve got to word carefully, is you put in 100%, and you have to rely on a whole lot of people in this industry, whether it be your band, booking agent, manager, this, that, and you could put your whole life on the line. Your whole life could depend on this career. You could throw away everything you have and put everything into it. But you’ve got to realize, the hardest thing I’ve realized is not everybody’s 100% is the same 100%. To me, 100%, it’s bleeding for it. It’s starving for it, bleeding for it. Versus somebody else’s 100% might mean taking an extra hour or two out of the day to practice. My 100%, if I’m a guitar player, my 100% is playing until my fucking hands bleed. Singing until you have to get the vocal surgery, which I did have to get vocal surgery because I was singing too hard at one point. That’s what 100% is, is putting every dime you have into this and almost being in debt. Some people live super comfortably, and you can’t do that in this industry. You can’t be comfortable. Eventually, you can. Eventually, it sounds hypocritical when you talk about five minutes ago the luxuries I had at Key West, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t earned. On your way up, you have to literally put blood, sweat, and tears in it. Back when I was in high school, I was a varsity wrestler for four years. That taught me a lot of things. You could break your nose. You could have a bloody nose. You could tear a muscle, literally tear a muscle.
You don’t stop wrestling. You keep going. You don’t just feel comfortable. Even if you’re winning 10 points up, there’s still a chance that somebody else, the person losing, can take the lead and pin you. The match ain’t over until the whistle is blown and the match is over. You have to keep going and put your blood, sweat, and tears into it. That’s what I’ve learned from not just wrestling, but the music industry. It’s relentless. You can’t put in 10%. You can’t put in what you consider your 100%. You have to put in
what the number one hardest working person’s 100% is. If that all makes sense.
Mary: It does. That makes complete sense.
Gavin: Somebody’s 100% is going to be more than your 100%. Somebody will always work harder than you will. That person that’s working harder will make it before you. You have to make sure your 100% matches. If not matched, it’s better than that other person’s 100%.
Mary: Like you said too, the importance of the people that you have surrounding you for what you’re trying to do, too. Those people can make you or break you too. Whether they’re other members in your band or managers, agents, whoever. It’s a lot of trust you have to put in other people.
Gavin: You’ll seem like an asshole to them when you say, “you’re not working hard enough. You’re not practicing enough.” “I’m working during the day. I got a six-hour shift and all I could spare is an hour of practice. I’m putting in an hour of practice a day. I’m practicing every day. Isn’t that working hard enough?” It’s fucking not. It’s not. That’s the advice I would give. Be hard on yourself. Push yourself. An hour a day is not enough. You’re not good at something unless you’ve done it 10,000 hours.
Mary: What is a fun fact about you that you would like others to know? It can be
anything.
Gavin: Oh my gosh, I don’t know. A fun fact? It depends. A big fact about me is what I literally just said. I’m such a hard ass on everybody and myself. Especially when it came to wrestling. I’m also a big fucking nerd. I perceive myself as a tough ass sometimes. Like I said, varsity athlete, this. Rock star, this or something like that. I will binge watch all Star Wars episodes or all the Marvel things. I was on my fucking phone the other day. What’s the thing where you swipe up and you keep trying to refresh your screen during the San Diego Comic Con trying to get all the Marvel updates and all that shit.
Oh, Avengers Secret Wars, Avengers Doomsday and all that shit. I’m such a nerd for that shit. As much as I perceive myself as really not that. Me and my dad and my brother, we went to… See, I don’t know how much of a nerd you are so this might not make sense, we went to “Star Wars Celebration” in 2017 and we camped out all night literally with all these sweaty nerds around us to get into that panel to watch what was going to be the coolest thing. It was the first footage of “Star Wars-The Last Jedi” and we were all so hyped because the trailer was awesome. Luke Skywalker, everybody was there on the stage right in front of us. Fucking Rey and all that. And then it turned out being one of the worst movies ever. I could go on and on. Besides the whole rock and roll stuff, I’m such a nerd about shit.
Mary: I think a lot of people lump people in boxes and I think that they see an image of
somebody, and they don’t realize that people are multidimensional. People don’t think
“he loves Star Wars”.
Gavin: Yeah, exactly. I could out Star Wars somebody any fucking day of the week.
Any day.
Mary: I’ve seen all the Star Wars. I’m okay with them.I like them. But I’m all about
Chewbacca. I just really love Chewbacca.
Gavin: Some people are like, they’re either Marvel or they’re Star Wars. I don’t know if
you’re nerdy enough to be into either of them.
Mary: I am more Star Wars than Marvel, for sure.
Gavin: Gotcha, gotcha. I will let my nerdism come to a conclusion.
Mary: I definitely have facets of nerdism for sure, but in those categories, yes, Star Wars definitely over Marvel. 100%. Star Wars over Marvel.
Gavin: Any day. I just wish that we had better Star Wars lately.
Mary: Yeah
Gavin: I love Star Wars. Acolyte? No. Nope.“Andor”, you know, Mandalorian Season 3? I’ll shut up. We can move on.
Mary: No, no, you’re fine. That was my last question. So, you’re good.
Gavin: Oh, that was the last question.
Mary: Yeah, that was the last one. We made it through all six, yeah!
Gavin: And here I was worried I was giving long answers, man. It’s funny. Somebody can see this and think they’re getting into, oh my gosh, what bands does Gavin Evick like? And they just, you know, get a 10 minute rant of me talking about Marvel and Star Wars and nerd shit.
Mary: And Nickelback.
Gavin: And Nickelback. There we go. Star Wars, Marvel, and Nickelback. You know,
when people click on this interview with me, they’re thinking, “oh, he’s going to talk about Motley Crüe and Poison. You know, he’s the 80s guy.”This is going to be the one and only interview where it’s like it’s like a deep cut where people find nerdy shit. And it’s like, I’m such a movie guy, too. Like I said, you know, behind or before, you know, the music stuff, I wanted to be, you know, an actor, a director, a producer, an editor. Did you ever watch the video to my new song, Young, Wild, and Free?
Mary: I have not. I have not seen it. I will.
Gavin: So a lot of people will complement the video because, you know, of the high production quality on it. You know, it’s a very high-quality video. I obviously paid thousands of dollars to have it filmed because I got a real film crew. Like, let’s say our budget was only a couple thousand dollars. I put every fucking cent into the filming of it, more so than the back half because, you know, I, like I said before the music, you know, into all the movies. I’m very, very proficient in editing and Final Cut Pro and stuff like that. I did all the production on that music video, you know, all of me right on this MacBook right here. I
did, I spent a whole week color grading it. I spent another two, three weeks clipping everything and doing all that. Edits and the transitions and all that. It’s because I’m such a nerd. It’s like I, I can almost put on like a pair of glasses and just work all day.
It’s like I love the music, but, you know, I also just love editing. I mean, you can go on our social media and, you know, the last two weeks I’ve been putting out little edits and stuff of our live shows. I’ll watch these high production artists like Morgan Wallen or something like that and they’ll have like a whole crew. He’ll bring like a film crew and they’ll edit and put things out the next day and like high quality edits after their show and I’ve been trying to do that lately, but it’s all just me. It’s all just me kind of doing that
afterwards because like I said, I’m such a fucking nerd when it comes to, you know, editing. I’ve done everything. I’ve directed. I’ve done all the editing. I’ve done acting before. So that’s another thing that, you know, I would definitely like to get into more than the music. I actually had a meeting the other day and we’re going to get more into kind of the movie side of acting because I think that acting stuff will only help kind of boost the music. So, that’ll be fun. I mean, like I tell everybody all the time, you know MGK, right? Machine Gun Kelly?
Mary: Yeah. Yeah.
Gavin: You know, I tell this story all the time. Back in like 2016 I didn’t know who he was. Not a whole lot of people did. And within that year, I think he had opened for Justin Bieber. Fucking Justin Bieber. He was in a movie called “Bird Box” and he also played Tommy Lee in “The Dirt”. I think that all happened right around the same time, and I remember we were watching “Bird Box” with my family and I remember my mom going, “I think that guy’s a rapper or something like that.” You know, he’s such a household name now but nobody really knew any of his music but then the second he had a small role in “Bird Box” and then he played Tommy Lee in “The Dirt” and suddenly he’s a household name and all of his music is, you know, blowing off the charts and stuff like that. So, you know, it’s funny. I think a lot of the, the movie stuff really helps boost your music too. Yeah.
Mary: What kind of acting do you like to do? Like what genre?
Gavin: Uh, you know, I haven’t been in a whole lot of things. You know, I’ve done just kind of local things, and I haven’t really gotten into it but I moreso see me kind of being… I got a very out there kind of personality. I kind of like a lot of the serious roles but, you know, I definitely into kind of in the comedy stuff, too.
Mary: Do you like horror?
Gavin: I love horror. I, you know, all of it. I love all genres.
Mary: That’s, that’s my nerdom. That, that’s my big one right there.
Gavin: Horror? What’s your favorite horror movie?
Mary: Probably the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series. Like, all of them combined. I’m a big Freddy fan. Big, big Freddy fan. Anything with vampires is good. Except for “Twilight”. So, not a “Twilight”fan.
Gavin: Did you see that new movie that came out last year? It was something about Dracula on a ship or something like that.
Mary: Yeah, yeah. It was not great. It was not great. But, yeah, I love horror stuff. That, that’s, that’s my jam right there.
Gavin: Yeah, I mean, I love, you know, all “The Conjuring” movies. I love a lot of 80’s stuff like the “Friday the 13th” and “The Nightmare on Elm Street”stuff. You know, literally the other night, sometimes when I’m just bored and I know I’m not going to fall asleep for a couple hours, I’ll just put on a movie or something like that. Literally, literally, I think it was like two nights ago, I put on “Carrie”. You know, all those, all those old Stephen Hawking movies. Is it Stephen Hawking? Who’s Hawking? Ohyeah the science guy.
Mary: Stephen King movies.
Gavin: Yes. Yeah, all that, even just the old stuff too is all great. Yeah, I love, I love all those horror movies. I remember, I think the first one I went to go see in the theaters was the 2015 version of Poltergeist, which it, it, it was all right. You know, it wasn’t the greatest, but you know, I think I was in like middle school at the time, so liked it.
Mary: It was pretty profound for you at that time?
Gavin: Oh yeah, it was the first horror movie I actually saw with my dad because, you know, kids don’t like horror movies. So, I was like, “Dad, I kind of want to see you this one. It’s PG-13. Can we go see it?” I can’t remember if I was in like elementary or middle. I think I was in middle in 2015. This is how I base it off. 2015 is when “Star Wars, The Force Awakens” came out. So, so that means I would, I would have been in
seventh grade. No, I would have been in eighth grade. Yeah. Yeah. I remember it was, it was when “Avengers, Age of Ultron”, and then “Star Wars, The Force Awakens” came out. So, I remember I took off days of school to go see the premieres.
Mary: That’s awesome.
Gavin: Like I said, total nerd. That’s how I base my years off of. Star Wars came out this year, so I was in this grade.
Mary: Hey, whatever works.
Gavin: Yeah, exactly.
*** FIN ***
Review of Gavin Evick Band’s Vampd show here: https://zrockr.com/2024/07/21/gavin-evick-vampd/
Gavin Evick Band promo shot courtesy of Head First Entertainment – All Rights Reserved
Photos of Gavin taken at Vampd by Taylor T Carlson- ZRockR Magazine 2024- All Rights Reserved