Maybe Boston Calling’s Green Stage should have been rebranded the Eagles-Green Stage on Sunday. The final day of the Memorial Day weekend festival brought a one-two punch of Philadelphia talent: A smooth transition between the party-pop funk of SNACKTIME and the groovy alt-rock of Mo Lowda & The Humble (who, as we learned, actually know each other — small world).
After their early afternoon set, Mo Lowda & The Humble sat down to bridge the gap between the two East Coast music scenes, talking about their roots performing at Temple University, their years spent performing in Boston, and why The Sinclair is so damn magical.
Victoria Wasylak: I love that you and SNACKTIME were two Philly bands back-to-back today. Can you tell me a little bit about what the Philly music community is like, and what you’re hoping to bring from that?
Kirby Sybert: It’s super diverse. There’s so many different kinds of bands — the West Philly thing is the basement shows, punk-type stuff. There’s jazz, there’s rock and roll. I feel like we have a bunch of friends that play a bunch of different kinds of music. So it’s cool to come all the way to Boston and see friends of ours that are playing the same stage.
Jordan Caiola: This band sort of started in high school, but we played through Temple [University]. We went to Temple and it was all house shows and smaller venues. I think coming up, playing with a lot of different bands in that scene, it was just the natural order that the first thing you do out of school is you move to Fishtown. That’s why I moved there, because Shane had already lived there and he was going to shows on Tuesdays and Wednesday nights and I was in the suburbs. I’m like, “I’m not missing this shit.” I just wanted to see Jeff’s band. That’s kind of how they met and there was always something going on. I think that that’s kind of what this band was built out of, you know?
Wasylak: So you guys were familiar with SNACKTIME beforehand? You’re friendly with them?
[In unison]: Yeah.
Shane Woods: I met the tuba player, Sam, for the second time — I guess, apparently, we played a show 10 or more years ago with his ska band that he was the frontman of, but now he’s playing tuba and synths for SNACKTIME. Then I reconnected with him in a Russian sauna in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
Wasylak: Is that a euphemism?
Woods: Nope. Me and my buddies, we go there and we like, schvitz and we get the sweat on. And we sat next to this dude and it was Sam from SNACKTIME.
Wasylak: You have a new record coming out next month and you made a quip that it was “all business” onstage today. How do you balance promoting a record when it hasn’t come out yet? How do you decide how much you want to play, and how much you want to talk about it?
Caiola: We’re pretty patient about [waiting and] playing new songs live until they’re recorded. We road test some, but I think we just have a tremendous amount of trust of our abilities in the studio at this point. We’re making shit that we want to make, and then hopefully the crowds fall in line and they dig it. Which I think we’ve always kind of been adventurous in that we like to find new tones and and push the limits on songwriting, or sometimes restrain ourselves with the limits on songs, but we’ve always remained… like, you know when it’s us.
It doesn’t sound that wildly different. No one will be like, “Really?” We sound like us and I think we have a style. We have five records out now. We’ve been playing a lot of songs for 10 years, so to play new stuff and to try it out on a stage like that is pretty exhilarating. I’m just ready to play it for our fans three feet from their faces.
Woods: I feel like once we start the club shows, we’re gonna sprinkle in a lot of older ones and play as many, if not all, of the new record as we can. But it’s nice to play this today because [there’s] a lot of new fans. We’ve been releasing these singles since early in the year, so anyone who’s new to us is experiencing it with what we want to be playing at the moment. So, it’s nice to hear.
Wasylak: What song are you really excited to hear today from another festival performer?
Sybert: “Santeria,” Sublime.
Woods: I want to see if Tom Morello breaks out any Rage [Against the Machine] stuff and there’s definitely, like, five Vampire Weekend songs I wanna hear.
Jeff Lucci: I’m sticking with Tommy.
Caiola: If Dave Matthews plays a song called “Shake Me Like a Monkey” –– it’s got this crazy horn line.
Sybert: Definitely stoked to see Dave. My cousin’s here and we grew up playing Dave together, so gotta see that.
Caiola: We gotta meet him. That’s our quest for today, meet Dave.
Wasylak: You’ve been playing in Boston for a long time, 10 years or so. What’s your favorite venue is to play here and why?
Caiola: The Sinclair. It’s the perfect size and it sounds great. It’s right in the middle — those 500- to 550-cap rooms feel like a full-ass concert, but it’s also intimate enough where they [fans] are right there. That’s probably my favorite size room in general.
Woods: Me too.
Lucci: Every venue we’ve played here is really dope, but The Sinclair still has my heart, too. It’s great energy in there always, for whatever reason. I think seeing the balcony, feeling like it’s like 10 feet away, just adds something. It’s like you’re getting eyes from below and above. That proximity definitely adds to the intensity.
Sybert: Also at Sinclair we played with The Litter Light, who’s longtime homies of ours, and that show was just really special. And the Paradise Rock Club was cool too ’cause of the legendary photos — you see Sting, and you see all these people that have played there. There’s that feeling of, I guess, nostalgia — a feeling of “this is rock and roll that’s been before us, and will be after us,” you know?
Caiola: We love Boston. Boston’s fucking great. It was the second or third city we started touring out[side] of Philly just based off of how close it is, but I’ve had family that’s lived up here for years — still do — and I think it was just the logical, “where else do we play?” It’s a great music town. We’ve never had a bad show in Boston, truly, ever.