2/20/18 - Special Guest: Edjacated Phools
DC Music Rocks
English - February 21, 2018 12:01 - 55 minutes - 75.7 MB - ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsMusic Arts Performing Arts Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
This episode features special guest Edjacated Phools and tracks by Matt Waller, The Radiographers, Higher Education, & Kitchen Noise. Announcements, New Releases from this week, Local DC Shows To See for the coming week, Details and important links from this episode are all on this show’s page at www.dcmusicrocks.com/past-episodes
Thanks to Edjacted Phools for hanging out with us in the studio this week!
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Podcast: iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, PodBean, PlayerFM, or THIS URL in your app of choice
FROM THIS SHOWMUSIC
Chicken Soup, by Matt Waller (Reggae, Alternative Rock)
The Seams, by Edjacted Phools (Rock/Punk)
Trying to be Heard, by The Radiographers (Rock, Blues Rock)
Vanity, by Higher Education (Country)
Mountain Home, by Kitchen Noise (Rock)
->Follow The Show's Spotify Playlist<-
ANNOUNCEMENTSBen Tufts and the Craig Tufts Foundation Hosts Tribute Benefit Event - ‘100 musicians cover The Police’.
On Saturday and Sunday, March 3-4, 2018, over 100 of the area’s top artists will gather at Gypsy Sally’s to pay homage to rock band The Police. This musical showcase is the eleventh event and fourth tribute show in the popular Ben Tufts and Friends series, hosted by local musician Ben Tufts. Tickets are $15 and available through the Gypsy Sally’s website. All profits from the event will benefit The Craig Tufts Educational Scholarship Fund, established in memory of Ben’s late father, which provides scholarships for youth studying nature through exploration and adventure. The Craig Tufts Educational Scholarship Fund was co-established by the Tufts family and The National Wildlife Federation, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.
NEW MUSIC RELEASESHis Dream Of Lions - Pseudo Star (5 Song EP) (Pop/Rock)
Vim & Vigor - Coming Home (5 Song EP) (Folk/Indie)
Wylder - Live at Whitestar Sound (4 Song EP)
Billy Winn - Crash Remixes (2 Song Single) (Pop/Techno)
Peter Maybarduk - Failed States (Single) (Folk/Indie)
NEW VIDEOSAlex The Red Parez - Raining Down https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MmdNfLBuAE
Soundproof Genie - Hollow Love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h5Ccvf4i6I
Our ‘DC Artists Official Music Videos’ Youtube Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtzE3kBQ_70kU0_uB-sdviWajkbzi2Akr
Check the calendar, linked below, for the full list!
http://www.dcmusicrocks.com/local-music-calendar
Fri Feb 23
Uptown Boys Choir @ Rock N Roll Hotel on H St NE
Sat Feb 24
Ardamus @ DC9 by U St NW
Three Man Soul Machine @ Pearl Street Warehouse by Waterfront in SW
Sun Feb 25
Two Ton Twig @ Solly’s on U St NW
A Shrewdness of Apes @ Villain & Saint in Bethesda
Mon Feb 26
Caustic Casanova @ DC9 Nightclub by U St NW
Tues Feb 27
Time Is Fire @ Rock N Roll Hotel on H St NE
Thu Mar 1
Touch The Buffalo @ Villain & Saint in Bethesda
Would you support us? We'd love to grow and do more! We're giving away shirts, access to our private facebook group, and more! We also intend to set aside 10% to contribute directly in the DC Local Music Scene through charities, sponsorships, events, etc. We want to continue to pay it forward!
HUGE shoutout to our current Patrons!
**Daniel Warren Hill** **David Mohl** **Eli Lev**
**Sarah Byrne** **Music 4 The Revolution (Abu Jibran)**
Why don't you let us send this to your email inbox?
*
Thank you!
Edjacated PhoolsVideo - Bio - Links - Transcript
Edjacted Phool's Bio:
The Edjacated Phools are a 6-piece fusion band based in Baltimore, MD. Comprised of Devin Barone (drums), Tyler Garrison (bass), Nick Hatzis, (vocals) Kyle Sappington (vocals), Logan Sappington (guitar, vocals), and Ben Yancheski (keys), they combine an energetic blend of rock, reggae, hip-hop, ska and punk influences into a unique sound.
The band had an exciting 2017, having been selected to open for The Expendables for the second time on March 14th at Rams Head Live in Baltimore, as well Badfish at The Fillmore in Silver Spring, MD on May 5th. Edjacated Phools also signed with Raised Fist Records in August and released their debut album, Check The Vibes, on September 1st. The band also presented the 2nd Annual Hightopps Backstage Bash on September 9th.
Website: https://edjacatedphools.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EdjacatedPhools
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edjacatedphools
Twitter: https://twitter.com/edjacatedphools
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Brian: On DC Music Rocks we're shining a spotlight on the great songs, artists, and incredible people behind the DC region's local music scene. The Edjacated Phools are a six-piece fusion band based in Baltimore, Maryland, with members in DC and in Baltimore. They combine an energetic blend of rock, reggae, hip-hop, ska, and punk influences into a unique sound.
The band signed with Raised Fist Records in August of 2017 and released their debut album you just heard that track from called "Check the Vibes," back on September first of 2017, and I've been a fan of these guys since, gosh, close to when I started the show, I've been an ... I've been following these guys since before they were with the record company, and before ... Like, way back in the beginning. I've been following you guys, and I've been such a fan of the work that you're doing and the incredible songs that you guys are putting out.
So, the bottom line for me, personally, is let me just fanboy for a moment and just say, it is so freaking awesome to have you guys here, man. Thanks for coming and doing this.
Logan: Thank you.
Kyle: Much love, much love.
Nick: [crosstalk 00:00:58] thank you so much.
Brian: This is ... Now, describe, for those folks who aren't familiar with Edjacated Phools, what is it that makes you guys special, would you say, if they see you guys?
Nick: I would say the one thing that sticks out is our energy on stage. I think we try to keep it very, very upbeat, and so our kind of in your face dynamic, our energy on the stage and just getting people's face, getting people to kind of dance and move around a lot. And our songs are really ... A lot of them are uptempo. A lot of them are really dynamic and very high energy. So, we try to convey that on stage, and I think people feel that for sure when they come to our shows, so ...
Brian: And what is ... So, if they come to a show, what will they likely see? What's an Edjacated Phools show like?
Logan: It's definitely going to be smokey in the room.
Brian: Because you like those fog machines?
Logan: Yes.
Kyle: Yes.
Nick: Yeah, we love smoke machines.
Logan: Fog machine supporters over here. Now, if you're gonna come to an Edjacated Phools show is what you're gonna get is a whole mix of good people, great music, better vibes, I think that at all of our shows you can always find really diverse, you know, flow of an environment of people. You can always find everybody who's in there jamming out, drinking, having a good time, and just enjoying the music with us.
Kyle: Yeah. Bottom line is you're gonna have fun if you come to one of our shows. I've never had someone tell me they didn't enjoy one of our shows and that's kinda like what we pride ourselves on, whether we're playing a three hour bar gig or a 30 minute set opening up for a touring band. We just bring the heat, you know. That's what we like to say to each other, "Let's bring the heater."
Logan: The heater.
Kyle: And when we go on stage we like to bring that heat with us, you know what I'm saying?
Logan: That's awesome. Where does the name come from? Edjacated Phools cause it's spelled funny too. It's E-e-d-j ...
Kyle: So, originally, there's a couple songs called "Educated Fools" by Rebelution, Damien Marley, and those are both kind of big influences to us, at least me, and we were doing the whole Reggae scene thing so the e-d-j-a ... The original spelling was j-a-h, Ed-jah-cated Phools, but we dropped the jah and we just stuck with Edjacated Phools cause we thought it was more us.
Brian: And you should know, Phools is spelled p-h-o-o-l-s. Edjacated Phools.
Nick: Always play with their minds.
Kyle: E-d-j-a-c-a-t-e-d. Edjacated.
Brian: Edjacated Phools. That's it.
Logan: We educate ...
Brian: [crosstalk 00:03:22] right along with the Reggae vibe that you guys, like in that song we just heard it's a more ... I really like that one. Now, talk about the ... So there's some DC and then some Baltimore connections. So, talk about the DC connection that you guys have. You talked about University of Maryland earlier. You played football at University of Maryland.
Kyle: Yes, sir.
Brian: That's Nick. What's the ... And there's another connection. What ...
Kyle: So, my name's Kyle and I own the head shop in DC, like a glass, borosilicate glass studio, basically. We're a gallery. We've represented a collaborative of artists. We represent over 70 artists and, yeah, we sell smoking devices and high end one of one art pieces.
Brian: Nice. Wow. All right. So definitely connected to the head and smoking art scene here in DC.
Kyle: Yup. Exactly man. You don't put premium gas into a Hoop D, if you know what I mean, you know? You've gotta put that stuff into something nice.
Brian: God, I hope not.
Nick: Put it into something nice.
Kyle: Exactly.
Brian: Oh, that's it. Hold it up. One love. I love it. All right, now and what about ... So now, you guys ... Well, first of all, introduce yourselves cause we've had you talking for a little bit, so introduce yourselves and then the other members of the band. Talk about that real quick.
Kyle: Well, my name's Kyle. I'm Logan's older brother. Me and Logan kinda started this whole music journey together a couple years ago and we've kinda met everybody else along the way and formed this amazing group. To my right, I have Nick. He's my co-vocalist. He's the sexy one. I'm the mean one.
Logan: So sexy. So sexy, Nick.
Brian: The sexy one?
Nick: The mean one.
Kyle: Well I wouldn't say mean, but I definitely have a mean beard. I've been working on this for a while so ...
Brian: Yes, you do. You should appreciate pictures of this man's beard. If you check out the episode details, I've got one there.
Kyle: It's flawless.
Brian: It's pretty serious.
Kyle: But yeah, we've got Logan. who's my little brother. He's been bothering me my whole life, playing guitar, so finally one day he was like, "Hey, man. Why don't you just play with me?" And I was like, "Cool." And uh ...
Brian: And then who else? There's 3 more members.
Kyle: Yeah, we have Devin, who's Nick's cousin actually and he's a monster drummer, super talented. We have Tyler Garrison who's a bassist. He was actually in the classical orchestra band at Talsom University.
Logan: Fingers.
Kyle: Yeah, we call him Fingers. When we met this kid, he had the most calloused hands.
Logan: His fingers were gross.
Kyle: Like, really. They were disgusting.
Logan: Come on. Let them know. It was really [crosstalk 00:05:44]
Kyle: Yeah. It was bad.
Logan: He's playing a lot of bass.
Brian: Okay. [crosstalk 00:05:47]
Logan: He's slappin the bass, man.
Kyle: But he just has peeled callouses all over his hands.
Brian: Wow.
Kyle: And I was like, "Your fingers are special." Then we got Ben who's like Logan's childhood best friend, who
Logan: Ben Mancheski.
Kyle: We didn't originally want Ben in the band. We were like, "Oh, no. Ben can be in the band." And then Ben just put in work and learned how to play the keyboard, taught himself, and he's been a huge asset for us.
Nick: He's like a utility member. He started off on Melodica. He's really just well-versed in music in general ...
Kyle: Super talented.
Logan: Got a great ear, honestly.
Brian: Wow. That's awesome, guys. Now, talk about you guys ... So on the personal side, outside of music now. You guys, are there hobbies ... What do you do in your free time besides this?
Logan: I work and I play music. That's about it.
Brian: Say more. You work what? You play music just with Edjacated Phools? Is there a [crosstalk 00:06:40] too?
Logan: Yeah. We do the whole band thing, and then on nights when the whole band can't get together, Nick and me, we actually, we play a lot around Baltimore and we do a lot of acoustic sets together where we'll go play.
Kyle: The dynamic duo.
Logan: Yeah. The dynamic duo.
Nick: Yeah, we try to stay involved with music any way we can. We play local bar gigs, do cover shows. I mean, I'm really big into fitness and stuff so I try to stay pretty active. I still skateboard, snowboard, you know. Even wake board on occasion.
Logan: Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Nick: Surf whenever we can. We like traveling so ... We're all are really family oriented, too so we have really big families. Spend as much time with family as possible.
Brian: Really?
Nick: And, you know, just try to have a well-rounded lifestyle where, you know, we are balanced and always involved in something cool.
Kyle: Yeah, I just became a dad in August so I have 6 ...
Brian: Congratulations.
Kyle: I have a 6 month old daughter.
Brian: Holy smokes.
Logan: Carter Jean.
Kyle: Her name's Carter. Yeah, she's beautiful. Shout out to my wife for doing that.
Brian: To both of you. You had to put it together.
Kyle: She did the hard part.
Brian: Clearly, clearly. Wow, man. Congratulations. And the family vibe sticks with you guys, too, cause you just said that you're all parts of different family. Your family members here in the band, too, which is [crosstalk 00:07:54].
Kyle: I mean, really, I look at everyone of these guys like my brother so ... And if any of them ever needed anything, I'd do it at the drop of a hat, you know.
Brian: Absolutely. Golly. All right, so now, talk about funniest moment as a band that comes to mind.
Kyle: Oh my God. I don't know if I can tell this story.
Logan: Are you all thinking what I'm thinking?
Kyle: I'm thinking about the Expendables show.
Logan: Yeah. Go ahead. You wanna take this or you want me to take this?
Kyle: All right. I'll try to say it as nicely as possible. So basically, we had our first show at Sound Stage. We played with Pacifier and the Expendables. We opened the show up for them.
Logan: And Tunnel Vision.
Kyle: And Tunnel Vision. But, long story short, we all wanted to get pretty, you know, intoxicated that night so we decided to be responsible adults and get a AirBNB.
Logan: We BNB'd it.
Kyle: And us being the fools, we thought, "Why not just get the nicest Air BNB we can find in Baltimore for the night?" So we end up booking this mansion in Fed hill that's like 6 stories. It has libraries in it.
Brian: Oh my God.
Logan: The shower could hold 25 people.
Kyle: It was like a Project X style house.
Brian: Holy cow.
Logan: It was amazing.
Nick: You could read in every room.
Kyle: But yeah, so Logan basically lied to the guy on AirBNB. He's like, "Yeah, I'm in town doing a video shoot." And I think the guy thought that Logan was doing porn at his place.
Brian: Oh yeah?
Kyle: So the guy decides to ...
Logan: He stuck around.
Kyle: Drop back in a little bit later that night.
Brian: Oh good.
Kyle: He comes home and there's like 55, 60 people just absolutely partying in this mansion like ...
Brian: Oh my [crosstalk 00:09:25].
Logan: It's getting wild.
Kyle: No reservations, you know what I mean. Pretty much anything goes. The guy walks in and I'm just sitting at the table and I'm like, "Who's this old guy?"
Brian: Oh, God.
Kyle: He's like, "Where's Logan?"
Logan: I'm literally in the corner talking to Fernando like, "Dude, we're screwed. We're so screwed, bro." And he's like, "What's wrong?" I'm like, "I don't know if this is gonna work out in our favor." And literally, right as I said that the guy tapped me on my shoulder and I turn around and it's the guy I rented the house from and he goes, "This is a lot more than 8 people." I was pretty much caught red-handed, [inaudible 00:10:02], but you know what, he was really chill about it. He thanked me for having all the people in the house take their shoes off. But the funniest part of this whole story is, right at the heat of the moment when I'm like freaking out and thinking this guy is gonna be so upset ...
Kyle: Kick us out.
Logan: He's coming down on me. I've got 65 people raging in his house. Our bass player, Tyler, walks right up to me and him in the middle of the conversation and says ...
Kyle: He goes, "Yeah, this would be a great house to get weird in." And the guy's standing right there and just starts shaking his head and just like, "You guys need to go."
Brian: Wow. So did you end up having to shut it down and leave or did you just [crosstalk 00:10:41]
Logan: No.
Kyle: No. We ended up just talking it out with him and we explained to him that we had some touring bands crashing at the house and we just got finished with a show.
Brian: Thank you, Lance.
Kyle: Yeah, he ended up being pretty cool, but there was definitely a designated talker on that night cause he walked into quite a party.
Brian: Holy smokes. Now, talk about biggest success moment for Edjacated Phools so far. What comes to mind?
Logan: Album release. No doubt. Our album release in July was definitely my proudest moment as a musician.
Brian: Say more. How so?
Kyle: Just, everyone came to support us that night, you know what I mean? It wasn't a show for anyone else. We had a great supporting cast. We had Never Ending Fall. We had Joint Operation. We had, you know, Foggy May. We had a number of super awesome bands, but the great thing about the Baltimore scene is that it's one big family, you know. Once you play with any of these bands, they're like family to you. They love you like you're their brother or sister and they definitely look out and show support whenever they can. And I think that's the most beautiful part about being in this scene is just the love that gets shared between, not only fans, but musicians amongst each other.
Logan: For sure. The support is amazing.
Kyle: But yeah, we had about 500 people come out to our album release party at Sound Stage in Baltimore and it was definitely one of the most fun nights for me. I thought we played a killer set and it was an extremely positive experience.
Brian: Wow. That sounds amazing, guys.
Kyle: What about you, Nick?
Nick: So we do a ... It's called a Back Stage Bash. We do it at High Tops in Timonium. We put that festival on ourselves so to see kind of a festival that's being put on by us and a bunch of other bands coming out, pretty much the whole neighborhood gets together, and it's just a big festival style event that we put on and ... We're able to expose other groups, touring artists, DC artists, and just people, you know, you get on the bill and are into playing a big festival style show that we put on every year. We've been doing that now three years. We have another one coming up in September of this year and so that's one of our, I think that's one of our biggest accomplishments. Setting up a mini festival style event.
Brian: Who's idea was that? How'd that come around?
Logan: So, the original idea started with Fernando and me were talking about getting a whole festival together with Nick and Kyle at this winery ...
Nick: Fernando's our manager.
Kyle: Shout to Fern.
Logan: Fernando Delgado. God, we love you. So it started out with just this idea like, "Hey, let's try to throw this festival at a winery." We ended up getting a bunch of good bands to respond and want to play the festival, but when we went to close the deal with the winery, the guy only wanted to sell one. So eventually, we decided ... I was talking for Fernando. I was like, "Hey, well why don't we just talk to our buddy Stink." And then we gave him a call up and we sat down and we had a meeting and we planned out the whole first event between Edjacated Phools and High Tops team. It really came together and I'm so proud of it. I couldn't be more proud of it. This year's gonna blow the roof off Baltimore.
Kyle: Yeah, last year we had People's Blues of Richmond, Lits, Choppadelic, Bumping Uglies, us, Never Ending Falls, Stack Like Pancakes, Oogy Wah Wah. We had the Vibesman, Joint Operation, Neff. All those guys. It was a stacked line up and it's gonna just get ...
Nick: Higher Education.
Kyle: Higher Ed was the first year, they weren't the second year. It's just always a stacked line up and we always, you know, have a good time.
Brian: That's awesome, guys. And now, one more question that I have ... This is one of my favorite questions to ask and it's for all three of you guys individually. It's if you could offer one piece of advice, what would it be?
Logan: Work hard. I would just say keep working hard. Don't give up. Music is always an uphill battle and you never know really where you're at, but as long as you're doing it for the right reasons ... I think we all do music because we love to express ourselves and express a message that we can't do in our day to day lives that we do as a group of men and I love it.
Kyle: Yeah. I would say don't sweat the small stuff. At the end of the day ... There's things that happen in this life that you can control and there's things that you can't and at the end of the day you just should pay attention to what's important and what really matters and don't pay attention to little things that will just, you know, bother you, eat you up.
Brian: What's an example of that, that comes to mind when you say that?
Kyle: I'll give an example. Me and my brother were fighting a little bit earlier today cause we have two shows on Saturday. I'm supposed to work, you know what I mean? And I'm like, "Well, what if I can't make both shows?" You know. What's really important here? Should I come make this show or should I make the one later or ... What's more important? How do I make it work? You know what I mean? What's the point of getting all focused on the details? As long as it works out, it doesn't really matter.
Logan: Don't sweat the small stuff.
Kyle: Yeah. Don't worry about the details. Don't worry about everything. It's gonna all come together like it should in the end.
Brian: Got it. What about ...
Nick: I would say check your ego at the door, you now. We're all ... At the end of the day, we're all creators, but we're very opinionated and, you know ...
Kyle: Passionate.
Nick: We all have a place we wanna come from, musically. You can't really have an ego and be creatively collaborative at the same time, so as long as you leave that at the door then you can really be open to, you know, really creating something as a collaborative and having something that's really organically yours as a group, as opposed to imposing your creative will when we're in writing sessions or whatever it may be. So yeah ...
Brian: Love it, guys. All right, and for those folks who want to find out more about you guys and follow what you're doing, where's the best place for them to go?
Logan: Facebook. We're all over Facebook and our homepage, edjacatedphools.com. Please check it out. We have our website up. It's got all of our show dates. It's got videos. It's not news. It's got reminders for the band. Our Facebook, our website. We are on Spotify, iTunes, all of the social media sources so please, Google us if you want. Check out our music. We'd love to have you guys.
Brian: Spell the name for them real quick.
Logan: Yeah. It's e-d-j-a-c-a-t-e-d p-h-o-o-l-s.