INTERVIEW: SPONGE

It’s a shame that a lot of people aren’t aware that Sponge is still making new music and out on the road to support it. Yes Sponge; the same Sponge that gave us such great 90’s classics as “Molly” and “Plowed”, as well as many others. The guys have been rather busy since the new millennium, with quite a few studio albums as well as a couple of live offerings. They were part of the 2014 Summerland Tour package and have been on the road doing their own dates in support of their latest studio album Stop the Bleeding. I was able to catch lead singer Vinnie Dombroski with a few free minutes and he schooled me on all things Sponge.

---

You guys have been touring off the latest studio album Stop the Bleeding for over a year now and you just finished up a successful run of East coast dates. You know they want to hear “Molly” and “Plowed”, but have they been receptive to the new tunes?

Vinnie Dombroski: Absolutely man! I look at it like this: the majority of people coming out to these shows are Sponge fans. We have seven studio records and they’re ready to hear just about everything. Of course, people are pumped up to hear “Plowed” and “Molly”, but they’re real fans of the band and they want to get in there and hear all the stuff. We actually take requests and ask what they want to hear and they’ll start shouting out “Silence is Their Drug”, ”The Drag Queens of Memphis” and we’ll play everything that we possibly can, even though we haven’t really rehearsed a lot of that stuff. They’re calling off some deep album tracks and not just the songs that people would know just from the radio. They shout out stuff from the new record like “Dance Floor” and “Save From View” and we do our best to try and oblige them.

I think that’s a really cool idea! You may not have rehearsed it much, but that’s the beauty of rock and roll man; it’s supposed to be raw and a little rough around the edges and not so sanitized. If you want it sanitized and manufactured, just cut on your damn radio.

Amen to that man! You know, as long as we haven’t had too much to drink (because people are always trying to buy us drinks before the show) we can usually dig pretty deep and play that stuff that we don’t normally play. We definitely want to give people their money’s worth and make sure they have a great time, so we try and keep the partying to a dull roar until after the show.

You guys did something pretty cool for the 20th anniversary of Rotting Pinata and recorded a show where you played it in its entirety and then released it on CD.

I think we did what a lot of bands do and we went out and played some dates where we performed just that record in its entirety, in the order that it was recorded. That particular recording was done at a place called the Emerald Theater in Mt. Clemens, Michigan just outside of Detroit. I think it was one of the first shows that we did and it was really cool. It’s really fun to play it in its entirety, but it’s not the most showbiz record to play, if you know what I mean. There are some slower tracks mixed in there and the more we played it, the more we realized that we had to inject some more rock and roll in there to keep people having fun and keep their attention.

Does it ever surprise you to find out who was impacted by that album? I mean, not only from music fans, but musicians as well?

The impact is like 20 years later and that’s a surprise! We weren’t writing for radio at the time because what was on the radio in Detroit was typical stuff like AC/DC, West coast hair bands, and the usual stuff. “Plowed” wasn’t anything like any of that stuff. Fast forward to today and it’s amazing that it’s a part of what radio is and a radio staple. So on that level, it blows my mind. Of course it blows my mind when a fan comes up to me and tells me that the record helped them through a really tough time, or when a musician tells me that all they listened to was this record and the music that they play today is because of that. So, it really does blow my mind on a lot of levels when that happens.

Is it too early to be looking ahead at a new studio album?

I’d have to have a really good reason or motivator. I’m not talking a record deal or money to make a record, but I’m talking, “What’s my angle or what’s my reason for making a record artistically from a writer’s point of view? What would interest me? What would motivate me?” The live record was an obvious choice and I’m very proud with how that turned out. It was a lot of fun, as was the Stop the Bleeding record. I’d need a motivator and I just don’t know right now what it is, but if I find it out, then you can expect us to have some kind of record.

Does it seem to you that the art of making a complete album as a piece of art is a dying art form? The attention span of a good part of the market seems to be shorter than usual with a lot of bands just going the EP route.

Oh absolutely and before Stop the Bleeding, I was in the same boat. We recorded an EP in 2010 called Destroy the Boy and I thought, why would I want to make a whole record for? Then we started to get in that mindset of why don’t we finish it off and I’m certainly proud of it. You know, I write songs all the time and it’s certainly not a songwriting issue, but it’s also partially a promoting issue. It’s a typical challenge and you can put it up on YouTube or you can put it out as a single, but it all still comes down to what’s the angle, what’s the motivating inspiration that’s going to give birth to this whole idea about making an album? We’ve been making records since 2003 and some people don’t know that we have. I still don’t feel as if we have fully promoted the Rotting Alive or Stop the Bleeding records like we could. They’re on iTunes and we have them with us when we’re out on the road, but I think we could promote them a bit more.

What’s the biggest difference for you between touring 20 years ago to promote Rotting Pinata  and touring today to promote Stop the Bleeding?

Years ago, the label would fax us stuff to our hotel that tracked our radio play and we could see which stations in which towns were spinning our records and whether they were alternative or rock stations. We would also look at Sound Scan to see how many records we were moving in that area and we knew what kind of show we would be having. The tools that we had were pretty simple, but they were very effective. These days, it’s everything but radio and record stores, even though radio still plays out stuff. The people who listen to the radio may not be the same people who go to the shows. Social media is allowing us to raise awareness these days of us being out on the road. We’re kind of left to ourselves these days to do a lot of that stuff.

Sponge – Come In From The Rain Official Video

[embedplusvideo height=”300″ width=”590″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1rkafux” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/Y_ulf8koyb4?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=Y_ulf8koyb4&width=590&height=300&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep4707″ /]

Yeah, I think that social media has allowed a lot of bands to become closer to their fans, where in the past, that didn’t necessarily happen.

Oh yeah, just look at things like Pledgemusic.com. You can see bands like Bush, Korn and the Smashing Pumpkins doing these campaigns. The cool thing about these is that it’s a complete interaction with the fans. It may take away some of the mystery that existed in the past, but it’s a way for the band to conduct business these days. We’re in an age where record labels really wouldn’t support the existence of a lot of these bands today. You either adapt to the changes like Twitter and Facebook or you get left behind.

Isn’t it kind of funny how it’s come full circle to the early days when you started out of pressing your own albums and selling them out of your car.

Absolutely man and that’s exactly how we started out. We did not have the internet at the time, but we certainly did make our own records and getting them out there and that eventually attracted the labels for us. You know, that’s why it’s not so odd for us to operate this way. We did a lot of the recording for the new record in the same studio where we did a lot of the recording for Rotting Pinata. A lot of the key players who were a part of that first record are still here with us now in 2014.

If you could go back and give the younger version of yourself any advice, would you and what would it be?

I certainly would and the thing about it is that I should have enjoyed it when it was happening. You know, all the travel, the success, the money and all that stuff; I wish I would have enjoyed it more then, but we took it all so seriously back then. It caused turmoil within the band because everybody took it so serious and there was conflict, but these days I really enjoy it more. I do get bummed out when I look back at all the places we went to and all the things that we did, the gigs that we played. Who knows, maybe all that seriousness was what made it work well. Still, you really have to take time to enjoy this shit when it’s happening to you and I make up for it today.

Connect with Sponge online! (click on the icons):

 

 By Johnny Price,  Senior Lead RockRevolt Magazine Journalist